
Book J5- y 

GopyiightN 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Life and Light 



Life and Light 

tlbougbts 

From the Writings of 

George Dana Boardman . 



WITH 



MEMORABILIA 



In Him was life 

And the life was the Light of men 



PHILADELPHIA 

Gbe (Briffitb & IRowlanD iprese 

1905 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 23 1905 

, Copyright Entry 
CLASS CX. XXc, No 



.557 



Copyright 1905 by 
Mrs. George Dana Boardman 






Go 

THE SERVICE OF 

®ur Iking 



Introit 



Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, 

He taughte, but first hefolwede it himselve. 

—GEOFFROI CHAUCER. 



Contents 

Page 

I. Life 3 

II. Light 9 

III. Facts and Truths 17 

IV. Forms and Figures 23 

V. The Incidental Christ 49 

VI. The Way, the Truth, the Life 55 

VII. The Optimism of Jesus 69 

VIII. Evolution . . 75 

IX. The Sacred Use of Words 83 

X. An Eirenicon . , 89 

XI. The Unification of Christendom 93 

XII. The Parliament of Religions 105 

XIII. The Disarmament of Nations 115 

ix 



x CONTENTS 

Page 
Outlines : 

XIV. St. Paul's Cloak 128 

XV. Life-Music 137! 

XVI. The Name Christian 141 

XVII. The Olympic Games 149 

XVIII. "The Old Order Changeth " 163 

XIX. The Universal Homo 173 

XX. Outlook for the Twentieth Century . .179 

L'Envoi 185 



I 

St. Paul's Definition 
of Life 



'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant ; 
O life, not death, for which we pant ; 
More life, and fuller, that I want. 

—In Memoriam. 




I 



|OME years ago, in discussing a certain 
physiological problem, I had occasion 
to gather together various definitions 
of life. Among the sixty or seventy collected not 
one was positive. They all expressed a negative 
rather than an affirmative. For example, Bichat's 
definition : " Life is the sum of the functions by 
which death is resisted." You perceive at once 
that this definition is negative, death being rec- 
ognized as the positive force to be overcome. 

But St. Paul deals not with negations, indirec- 
tions, or uncertainties. His conception is as clear 
and straight as a ray of light : " To me to live is 
Christ." Here is no manner of doubt. The 
assertion is perfectly absolute, and yet it is 
perfectly simple. St. Paul's definition of life is 
expressed by a single word. That word is so 
simple that a little child can understand it, and 
be glorified by it. And yet it is so vast that no 
archangel shall ever gauge it. 

5 



6 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Observe too, the intense personality of the 
phrase. The personality is two-fold. First, the 
subject : to me, in my own personal case, to live 
is Christ. Secondly, the predicate : Christ, the 
personal, living Christ. He does not say, to me 
to live is to love Christ, or serve Christ, but he 
says to me to live is Christ himself. Other per- 
sonages there have been who have exercised and 
still exercise transcendent personal power ; for 
instance, Plato, Shakespeare, Paul himself. But 
who can say, To me to live is Plato ! Shakes- 
peare ! Paul ! Ah, Christ is not so much a 
historic power as a present power ; not so much 
an external as an internal force ; not so much a 
creed as an experience. " It is no longer I that 
live, but Christ that liveth in me." 

To St. Paul Christ was his life-sphere, the 
sphere for every capacity, alike of spirit and 
soul and body. Christ was the sphere for every 
spiritual capacity. Christ was the sphere for 
every intellectual faculty, for imagination and 
reason and utterance. In Christ he conceived 
and imaged and reasoned and concluded and 
declared. In him was all 

large discourse, 
Looking before and after. 



ST. PAUL'S DEFINITION OF LIFE 7 

Again, Christ was the sphere for every emo- 
tional capacity looking heavenward ; for adora- 
tion and allegiance and trust and love and com- 
munion and aspiration. In Christ every choice 
originated, every purpose took form, every voli- 
tion marched forth, every habit crystallized. In 
Christ was his sanctuary, his only holy of holies, 
wherein he adored and implored and trusted 
and communed and joyed and soared and felt 
himself grow celestial. 

Again, Christ was the sphere for every emo- 
tional capacity looking earthward ; for love, joy, 
peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith- 
fulness, meekness, temperance ; for every duty 
and feeling toward man as well as toward God. 
Christ was his first and only meridian whence 
he calculated all earth's longitudes. 

Once more, Christ was the sphere for every 
bodily capacity ; for his eye, refusing to gaze on 
anything which did not reflect Christ's image ; 
for his ear, refusing to listen to anything which 
did not echo Christ's praise ; for his tongue, 
refusing to say anything which did not add to 
Christ's glory ; for his hand, refusing to touch 
anything which he could not turn into Christ's 
honor ; for his foot, refusing to step where 



8 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Christ's own hallowing footstep had not been. 
In the judgment of St. Paul Christianity and 
secularity instead of being foes, were friends, so 
thoroughly penetrating each other that he felt 
assured that Christ would be magnified in his 
body, whether by life or by death. 

To St. Paul, then, Christ was the source, the 
means, the end of life. Christ was his life ele- 
ment. He had no conception of life apart from 
Christ : "Life was but another name for Christ." 
Christ's love was his motive power, Christ's 
wish his aim, Christ's character his constitution, 
Christ's example his precedents, Christ's right- 
eousness his raiment, Christ's will his food, 
Christ's truth his light, Christ's spirit his atmos- 
phere. He breathed Christ. Jesus Christ was 
thus alike the root and the stalk and the blossom 
and the fruit of St. Paul's character. He was the 
realizer and fulfiller of every human capability. 
As in Christ Jesus dwelt all the fulness of the 
Godhead bodily, so St. Paul felt that in Christ 
Jesus he himself was completed, filled full, 
fulfilled. With, from, under, by, toward, for, in, 
Christ he lived. Christ was thus the center 
and circumference of his being, his Alpha and 
Omega, his all in all. 



II 



God is Light 



O Light Supreme that doth so far uplift thee ; 

O Light Eterne, sole in thyself that dwelleth ; 

The Love which moves the sun and the other stars ! 

The primal light all irradiates. 

— Dante's Paradiso. 



II 




HEN we talk of light we are moving in 
presence of a very subtle mystery. The 
origin and nature of light is still a pro- 
found problem. True, we talk about the laws 
of light ; its laws of reflection, refraction, absorp- 
tion, dispersion, polarization, etc. But these are 
only phenomena. We do not know the essence 
of light itself. Are we wiser than when the 
Almighty, addressing the Emir of Arabia, speaks 
out of the whirlwind, saying : 

The way — where is it to Light' s dwelling-place ? 
And Darkness — where the place of its abode ? 
That thou shouldest take it to its bounds, 
Or know the way that leadeth to its house ? 

—Job 38 : ip, 20. 

One thing is certain, light is the nearest known 

sensible approach to immateriality. Indeed, the 

undulatory theory denies that light is material, 

and affirms that it is but a mode of motion. We 

11 



12 LIFE AND LIGHT 

are accustomed to say that there are but two 
things in the universe — spirit and matter — and 
that the chasm between these is infinite. Possibly 
this is one of those assumptions which, did we 
know more, we would affirm less. Possibly light 
is an instance of what the philosophers call tertium 
quid — a third something, intermediate between 
spirit and matter, etherially bridging the measure- 
less chasm. Possibly light is God's natural expres- 
sion, outflow, radiation, manifestation, vestment : 

O Lord, my God, thou art very great, 
Thou art clothed with honor and majesty, 
Thou coverest thyself with light as with a mantle. 

■ — Ps. 104 : I, 2. 

Possibly, when the Creator moves in that 
finite world we call time, he leaves light as his 
personal vestige and train ! His mantle ripples 
into light, is light itself. Possibly the bard of 
" Paradise Lost" is right when he sings : 

Hail, holy Light ! Offspring of heaven, firstborn, 

Or of the eternal, co-eternal Beam, 

Bright Effluence of bright Essence Increate. 

— < ' Paradise Lost, ' ' III. , 1-6. 

In view of this possibility, how natural as well 
as fitting that the ancient token of God's per- 



GOD IS LIGHT 13 

sonal presence among the Hebrews should have 
been the Shechinah, or dazzling glory-cloud : 

By day along the astonished lands, 

The cloudy pillar glided slow ; 
By night, Arabia's crimsoned sands 

Returned the fiery column's glow. 

— Sir Walter Scott. 

As God is Light, so are his children. I believe 
that light is latent within us all, and that, under 
the free transcendent conditions of the heavenly 
estate, it will ray forth spontaneously. 

Jesus Christ himself, as incarnate, is the 
Shadow of God's Light. Infinite God, deity, as 
unconditioned and absolute, no man hath ever 
seen or can ever see and live (Exod. 33 : 20). 
He dwelleth in light which no man can approach 
unto (1 Tim. 6 : 15), is light itself. "Dark with 
excess of light," we poor finite beings cannot 
behold him except through the softening inter- 
vention of some medium. Therefore the Son of 
God, brightness of his glory and express image 
of his person (Heb. 1 : 3), radiance of his efful- 
gence and character or impress of his substance, 
became incarnate, that in the softer morning star 
and suffused dayspring of the incarnation we 



14 LIFE AND LIGHT 

might be able to look on the dazzling Father of 
lights and not be dazed into blindness. How 
bright Christ's inherent glory was may be seen 
from the fact that when he had risen again and 
appeared to Saul on his way to Damascus, his 
splendor was so effulgent that it actually smote 
the persecutor into blindness (Acts 22 : 11). 
The eternal Word who in the beginning was, and 
was with God, and was God (John 1:1), laid 
aside for a while the glory which he had with the 
Father before the world was (John 17 15), and 
became flesh (John 1 : 14), that through the 
mitigating veil of that flesh we might be able to 
gaze on the burning face of the infinite One and 
still live. The incarnation was a benignant 
eclipse of the llght of light, christ's hu- 
manity casting its solemn, majestic shadow 
athwart the immensity of human time as his 
earthly nature swept in between infinite 
God and finite man, thus graciously obscur- 
ing THE OTHERWISE INTOLERABLE, CONSUMING 

blaze. Wretched the man whom the god of 
this world has so blinded that that eclipse be- 
comes a total one ! Blessed the man who, 
however profound the obscurity, still perceives 
the flashing corona of immortal God-head ! 



GOD IS LIGHT 15 

Thrice blessed the man who abideth under the 
shadow of the Almighty! (Ps. 91 : 1.) Thus 
Jesus Christ is the shadow of God ; and this 
in a two-fold sense : a shadow of interception 
and so obscuring God, and a shadow of rep- 
resentation and so revealing God. Yea, that 
God who in the beginning commanded light to 
shine out of darkness amid the night-palled 
chaos, saying, " Let light be," and lo, light was 
— that same God hath shined in our hearts to 
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of 
God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4 : 6). 

But Jesus Christ is not only the shadow or 
tempered image of God ; in the very act of be- 
coming that shadow Jesus Christ also became 
the Light of the world (John 8:12). The Son 
of God is the true Prometheus, descending from 
the true Olympus, bringing down to this dark- 
ened, groping, chaotic world the blazing torch 
of heaven's own fire. In his light we see light 
(Ps. 36 : 9). He is the true Light which, coming 
into the world, is enlightening every man (John 
1 : 9). And he is enlightening every man 
through the manger in which he was laid, 
through the words he spake, through the works 
he wrought, through the example he set, through 



16 LIFE AND LIGHT 

the character he was, through the death he en- 
dured, through the resurrection he won, through 
the throne he holds. This, in fact, was the 
secret of the Christ's mission into the world. 
The very purpose for which the Spirit of the 
Lord God had anointed him was that he might 
claim recovery of sight to the blind (Isa. 61 : i) 
by becoming himself the Light of men. 



Ill 

Facts and Truths 



Take all in a word ; truth in God's breast 
Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed ; 
Though he is so bright and we so dim, 
We are made in his image to witness him. 

— Robert Browning. 







Ill 

E must distinguish between facts and 
truths. On the one hand, facts belong 
to the physical world ; they exist un- 
der conditions of space and time, having a be- 
ginning, and, it may be, an ending ; they appeal 
to the senses — to the eye, the ear, the touch ; 
they are matters of weight, form, color, place, 
history, science ; but they are not necessarily 
moral. For example, there is no moral quality in 
the geometrical fact that a cube has six sides, 
or in the chemical fact that a molecule of water 
consists of two weights of hydrogen and sixteen 
weights of oxygen, or in the chronological fact 
that Jesus of Nazareth died on Calvary. On 
the other hand, truths belong to the spiritual 
world ; they are largely independent of the con- 
ditions of time and space ; they appeal to the 
senses of the soul — to reason, imagination, con- 
science ; they are matters of faith, hope, love ; 

as such, they are intensely moral. For example, 

19 



20 LIFE AND LIGHT 

the idea of morality culminates, not in the phys- 
ical fact that Jesus died on Calvary, but in the 
moral truth that Jesus died on Calvary to save 
sinners. Now, science, or the Bible of Nature, 
has to do with facts, and moving in its solemn 
cloisters we tread on holy ground ; we have the 
God of law, of force, of motion, of phenomena. 
Christianity, or the Bible of Scripture, has to do 
with truths — with the spiritual God, in his rela- 
tion to moral character ; the God who par- 
dons, loves, transfigures, whose moral secrets 
are beyond the horizon of scientific observation, 
above the zenith of philosophical induction, who 
interprets all facts, who reveals all truths, because 
He is in himself the Truth of truths. 

Thus, truths are infinitely more important 
than facts, and it requires more faith to be- 
lieve in truths than in facts. When the Judge 
of the quick and the dead shall summon us 
before his bar, he will not ask us about facts, 
however important they may have been for us 
as citizens of this world. But he will ask us 
about truths — those august verities which shall 
abide when earth's facts shall have vanished. 
Voltaire was a learned man, knowing a great 
many facts. But learned as Voltaire was, he 



FACTS AND TRUTHS 21 

was no match in wisdom for the Christian 
serving-woman who, 

Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true — 
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew. 

— William CowpeS s "Truth." 

Thank God that in the Lord Jesus facts be- 
come truths. Light in nature is a fact ; light in 
Jesus becomes a Truth. He transfigures ma- 
terialism into Spiritualism ; environment into 
Instrumentality; biology into Life; history into 
Providence ; nature into Scripture ; science into 
Ethics ; philosophy into Theology ; theology into 
Character ; opportunity into Achievement ; an- 
thropology into Manhood ; society into Church ; 
earth into Heaven. 



IV 

Forms and Figures 



The things of earth 
Are copies of the things in heaven, more close, 
More clear, more near, more intricately linked, 
More subtly than men guess ; mysterious, 
Whispering to wistful ears, 
Nature doth shadow spirit. 

— Sir Edwin Arnold. 



Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God ; 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes, 
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries. 

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



IV 




ALL TRUE ART A HUMAN FIGURATION FROM A 
DIVINE FORM 

Distinguish Form and Figure 
IRST of all it is needful that we dis- 
tinguish carefully between Form and 
Figure. Not that the distinction is 
recognized in common speech ; although, as it 
seems to me, it ought to be. Form, in the large, 
philosophical (Platonic?) sense of the word, is 
not so much visible figure as it is that invisible 
pattern of which the visible figure is more or 
less a representation or copy. The Form is the 
idea existing prior to the figure, and independ- 
ently of it ; the figure is the Form actualized in 
the sphere of matter ; the idea, so to speak, ma- 
terialized. Thus the Form is the essential ; the 
figure is an incidental. The Form is invariable ; 
the figure is variable. The Form is common to 
a class ; the figure is an individual of that class. 

The Form is the invisible, ideal plan ; the figure 

25 



26 LIFE AND LIGHT 

is a visible, more or less close, copy from that 
plan. The Form is the perfect archetype ; the 
figure is a more or less perfect antitype. The 
Form is the precedent idea ; the figure is the 
Form as it appears when it comes within the 
range of our senses. Let me illustrate : A cater- 
pillar passes from the state of a larva into the 
state of a butterfly; it is an instance of trans- 
figuration or change of figure ; not of trans- 
form2X\on or change of Form. True, we speak 
of the change as a " metamorphosis " : but this 
is because we speak loosely; the metamorphosis 
is only phenomenal — a change in figure : it is 
not radical, that is, a change in form or iden- 
tity. The Form, which no mortal eye has seen 
or can see, is common to the caterpillar and to 
the butterfly; the caterpillar and the butterfly 
are different figurations from the one invisible 
Form. Were it possible for the caterpillar to 
be changed, say, from an articulate into a verte- 
brate (that is, were it possible for the caterpillar 
to undergo what is called ''transformation of 
species "), the change in that case would be 
more than a trans-figuration ; it would be a 
trans/^^ation, or metamorphosis in the strict 
sense of the term. 



FORMS AND FIGURES 27 

This Distinction Biblical 

And this distinction is as biblical as it is phil- 
osophical. For example, St. Paul in writing to 
the Romans, says : " Be not conformed to this 
world (ffov(T^fjLaTc^eade y configured to this aeon); 
but be ye transformed ([xezafiopipouade) by the re- 
newing of your mind, that ye may prove what 
is that good and acceptable and perfect will of 
God (that is, be not content with undergoing 
transfiguration of behavior ; undergo transuda- 
tion of character)" (Rom. 12 12). 

Again, writing to the Philippians, the same 
apostle says : " Our conversation (citizenship, 
commonwealth) is in heaven : from whence also 
we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ ; 
who shall change (//era^/zanW, fashion anew, 
re-fashion) our vile body (the body of our hu- 
miliation), that it may be fashioned like unto 
(o6fjLjuop<pov, conformed to) his glorious body (the 
body of his glory) according to the working 
whereby he is able even to subject all things 
unto himself" (Phil. 3 : 20). 

Accordingly, human identity does not lie in 
the visible, incidental, variable figure ; human 
identity lies in the invisible, essential, archetypal 
Form. In other words, the resurrection body is 



28 LIFE AND LIGHT 

not a re-emergence of the old figure ; the resur- 
rection body is a new and nobler figuration from 
the immaterial, archetypal Form. That arche- 
typal Form, as in the case of the caterpillar and 
butterfly just cited, is common to the present 
figure or natural body and to the coming figure 
or spiritual (pneumatic) body ; it is in that arche- 
typal Form that the identity consists. The resur- 
rection then will be a transfiguration — not a 
transformation. The same thing may be said of 
the coming (2 Peter 3:13) new heavens and earth, 
wherein dwelleth righteousness. The present 
heavens and earth are to be destroyed ; not in the 
sense of annihilation, but in the sense of transfig- 
uration (2 Cor. 7). The fashion (figure) of this 
world is passing away : but the Form of it is 
abiding (Matt. 20 : 28). In the regeneration 
{palingenesis, rebirth of nature) when the Son of 
Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, the new 
cosmos will be identical in Form with the present 
chaos : but it will be a new and sublimer figura- 
tion from the same unseen and everlasting Form. 

Summary 

To sum up : Forms are, so to speak, the Crea- 
tor's thoughts before they are materialized into 



FORMS AND FIGURES 29 

or represented in things ; they are the arche- 
typal font of God's ideas impressed on the visi- 
ble page of his creation. The material universe 
is a myriad-fold visible illustration of a few in- 
visible Forms or archetypal ideas in the Crea- 
tor's mind. To cite the noble lines of Edmund 
Spenser : 

What time this world's great Workmaister did cast, 

To make all things such as we now behold, 

It seems that he before his eyes had plast 

A goodly patterne, to whose perfect mould 

He fashioned them as comely as he could, 

That now so fair and seemly they appear, 

As naught may be amended anywhere. 

That wondrous patterne, whereso' er it be, 
Whether in earth, laid up in secret store, 
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see 
With sinful eyes, for fear it to deflore, 
Is perfect beauty. 

To restate our theme : All true art is a human 
figuration from divine Form. 

Applications of this Truth in the 
Art-world 

And now let me apply this great truth to 
various departments in the art-world. Of course 



30 LIFE AND LIGHT 

I shall not be so foolish as to undertake any 
technical presentations ; Apelles the painter long 
ago forewarned me against this when he said to 
his cobbler-critic: " Ne sutor ultra crepidam" 
(Let not the shoemaker go beyond his last). If, 
however, I might at this point venture to use 
one or two technical expressions, I would say 
that in presenting my theme I shall try, so to 
speak, the brush of the impressionist rather than 
that of the pre-Raphaelite ; attempting large- 
ness of outline and strength of effect rather 
than exactness of detail or minuteness of finish. 
In other words, I have to do with principles 
rather than rules ; with parables rather than 
technicalities ; with Forms or patterns rather 
than figures or shapes. Let me then apply this 
great truth of divine Forms. 

First, to Architecture : Worship is the divine 
Form ; temples are human figurations. I men- 
tion architecture first because it is in many 
respects the fundamental art. 

Before proceeding, however, to make the ap- 
plication, let me remind you that the Creator 
himself is the primal archetypal architect. For 
"nature," as Sir Thomas Browne has said, "is 
the art of God." Recall the sublime architecture 



FORMS AND FIGURES 31 

of the creative week. How grandly grow before 
us, tier on tier, the outlines of nature's cathedral, 
its materials of atoms emerging from the abyss 
of infinite space, and grouping into molecules ; 
its colossal foundation-stones quarried from 
chaos ; its clinks and sparks at the strokes of 
celestial chisels ; its flying buttresses of the 
hills and massive walls of the mountains ; its 
mosaic pavement of gems ; its stately aisles of 
the primeval forests ; its towering columns of 
crystals ; its foliated capitals and pendants and 
moldings of vegetation; its windows of auroras; 
its "majestical roof fretted with golden fires"; 
its choir of humankind ; its priest and sacrifice 
the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world ; 
its vergers of cherubim ; its bell-toll of Sabbath. 
No wonder then that when its corner-stone was 
laid, the morning stars sang together, and all 
the sons of God shouted for joy (Job 38 : 6, 7) ; 
or that when its headstone was brought forth, 
it was with shoutings of Grace, grace unto it 
(Zech. 4 : 7). 

But to return to the application of our great 
principle — divine Forms and human figurations — 
to architecture ; an application specially pertinent 
because architecture is in an eminent sense the 



32 LIFE AND LIGHT 

sacred art. " See that thou make the tabernacle, 
and all the furniture thereof, according to the 
pattern that was showed thee in the mount " 
(Exod. 25 : 40). So said Jehovah to Moses dur- 
ing the forty days and nights that he was en- 
shrined in the glory-cloud of Mount Sinai. But 
although the tabernacle was divinely planned, 
yet the details of the plan were humanly exe- 
cuted. The divine Form of the tabernacle was 
shown lo Moses on the mount but the human 
figurations from the divine plan were entrusted 
to the artists Bezalel and Aholiab, to devise 
and work in gold and silver and brass and stone 
and wood and all manner of workmanship. All 
which is a hint very rich and significant. There 
are moments of inspiration or sacred rapture 
which come to every true architect when, like St. 
John in Patmos, he is carried away in the Spirit 
to a mountain great and high, whereon he is 
shown a pattern of the temple not made with 
hands, even the temple of the Lord God the 
Almighty and the Lamb, and hears a voice divine 
saying : " See that thou make all things according 
to the pattern shown on the mount." And as he 
comes down from that height of spiritual exalta- 
tion, and engages again in his vocation, the 



FORMS AND FIGURES 33 

memory of that sacred vision shall be to him a 
guide and oracle and inspiration. He will hence- 
forth conceive his own vocation as a divine call 
to be also a spiritual architect, commissioned by 
the Lord of the worlds to do his part in design- 
ing and rearing (Heb. 8 : 2) the true tabernacle 
which the Lord pitched, not man. Not that all 
his architecture must be in the technical sense 
ecclesiastical. Far from it. But his architecture 
must be in the real sense sacred, that is, Chris- 
tian. He may select any style of architecture he 
chooses — Egyptian, Assyrian, Hellenic, Roman, 
Byzantine, Gothic, Renaissance, Arabic, Com- 
posite ; but the purpose and spirit of his archi- 
tecture must be religious. For example : Is he 
commissioned to design a dwelling-house ? He 
must not only study comfort and beauty ; he must 
also accompany his design with the prayer that 
his dwelling-house may indeed prove a Christian 
home. Is he commissioned to design an educa- 
tional edifice ? He must accompany his design 
with the prayer that all the lessons taught in 
that edifice may be true and uplifting and serv- 
iceable to mankind. Is he commissioned to 
design a civic structure ? He must accompany 
his design with the prayer that all the legislation 



34 LIFE AND LIGHT 

enacted in that structure may be patriotic and 
just and beneficent. Is he commissioned to 
design a bourse ? He must accompany his de- 
sign with the prayer that all the transactions in 
that bourse may be honest and generous and 
truly sacred. Is he commissioned to design a 
pleasure-house ? He must accompany his design 
with the prayer that all the entertainments offered 
in that pleasure-house may be pure and whole- 
some and uplifting. In brief, is he commissioned 
to design any kind of structure whatever ? He 
must accompany his designs with the prayer that 
his structure may be as it were a porch, or a 
chapel, or a choir, or a shrine, or a column, or an 
arch, or a window, or a turret, in our Father's 
house of the many mansions, even God's own 
spiritual cathedral. And observe that architec- 
ture is true in the proportion that it adheres to, 
and false in the proportion that it departs from, 
the pattern shown in the mount. Accordingly 
that divine Form in and by its very nature ex- 
cludes all human figuration of evil structures, 
whether distillery, saloon, gaming-house, or 
seraglio. Beware then, O youth, looking forward 
to the architectural profession, of rearing any 
tower of Babel, however lofty or strong or 



FORMS AND FIGURES 35 

splendid. Be it for you to inscribe as the motto 
for your studio the divine legend — 

Except Jehovah build the house, 
They labor in vain that build it. 

— Psalm 127 : 1. 

Secondly, to Sculpture : Righteousness is the 
divine Form; virtues are human figurations. I 
mention sculpture next because, having started 
with the concept of a temple, I cannot help think- 
ing of niches and statues and monuments. 

" But how," I hear you asking, "will you rec- 
oncile your application with the Second Com- 
mandment, which expressly says: "Thou shalt 
not make unto thee any graven image, nor the 
likeness of any form that is in the heaven above, 
or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the 
water under the earth " ? (Exod. 20 : 4.) 

I answer, by quoting the very next part of 
this same Second Commandment, which also 
says : " Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto 
them nor serve them " (Exod. 20 : 5). 

Remember that Jehovah himself commanded 
Moses to adorn the tabernacle with figures of 
cherubim. In fact the imaging faculty or faculty 
of making images — imagination in the primary 



36 LIFE AND LIGHT 

sense of the term — is itself a divine gift ; and 
therefore, like any other divine gift, is to be cul- 
tivated. The lower the conception of God, the 
ruder the art of the worshiper. Recall the gross 
figure of the Philistine Dagon ; the vulgar statue 
of the Indian Guatama ; the tawdry figure of the 
Italian Bambino. On the other hand the higher the 
conception of God, the more exquisite the adorn- 
ments of his sanctuary. I know not all the com- 
ing ministries of art. But I do believe that, as 
the Creator himself — the Artist of artists — has 
already opened the way for the legitimate use of 
shape and hue and poetry and music in his sanc- 
tuary, so he will in the course of his unfoldings 
open the way for the legitimate use of sculpture 
and painting and gems. No ; the Second Com- 
mandment does not forbid the use of sculpture 
in worship. 

Then what does the Second Commandment 
forbid ? It forbids all idolatrous representations 
of Deity. And this for the reason which the 
divine Man himself stated at Jacob's well : 

" God is a Spirit : and they that worship him 
must worship in spirit and in truth " (John 4 : 24). 

That is to say, we must worship God according 
to his own nature ; his nature is spiritual ; there- 



FORMS AND FIGURES 37 

fore, just because his nature is spiritual, we must 
worship him spiritually, that is, spirit-wise, not 
image-wise ; for only what is spiritual in us can 
worship what is spiritual above us. Recall that 
memorable scene when the great apostle to 
the non-Jews, standing on the Areopagus, re- 
minds his Athenian listeners of a saying of one 
of their own poets named Aratus : "We are 
also his offspring." Then pointing to the 
mighty Acropolis towering within almost a 
stone's throw of him, and crowned with its daz- 
zling and colossal statue of Pallas Athena, he 
adds : " Being then the offspring of God [the 
spiritual God] we ought not to think that the 
Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, 
graven by art and device of man " (Acts 17 : 29). 
As the architecture of which I have spoken is 
spiritual architecture or the cathedral of wor- 
ship, so the sculpture of which I now speak is 
spiritual sculpture or statues of character. The 
sculptural Form of which I speak is the arche- 
typal character-pattern shown on the mount. 
The statues of which I speak are human excel- 
lencies and virtues figurated from that divinely 
archetypal Form. Even now, as I am speak- 
ing, I catch glimpse of the Incomparable One: 



38 LIFE AND LIGHT 

" Who, existing in the form of God [God's 
primal, essential, archetypal condition], counted 
not the being on an equality with God a thing 
to be grasped ; but emptied himself, taking the 
form of a servant [the essential archetypal con- 
dition of a servant], being made in the likeness 
of men, and being found in fashion as a man 
[the assumed, incidental figure of a man] " 
(Phil. 2 : 6-8). 

The Son of God is the archetypal Form of 
Deity ; the Son of Man is the absolutely perfect 
human figuration from that archetypal Form. 
The Man of Nazareth is the perfect character- 
figure sculptured from the infinite Form of 
the eternal Righteousness. And it is our un- 
speakable privilege and honor to be sculptured 
as statuettes, each according to his own endow- 
ments and temperament figurated from the 
Divine Man and enshrined in the niches of 
Jehovah's own cathedral. 

It is the physical forces, light, electricity, gravi- 
tation, which are swift. It is the vital forces 
which are slow — they are processes. For exam- 
ple, how slowly grows the plant ; first the blade, 
then the ear, then the full corn in the ear ; and 
the nobler the plant, the slower the growth. 



FORMS AND FIGURES 39 

Again, how slowly grows the body. How slow 
also the educational processes. Which things are 
an allegory. Thus Laertes to Ophelia : 

Nature crescent does not grow alone 
In thews and bulk j but as this temple waxes, 
The inward service of the mind and soul 
Grows wide withal. 

—"Hamlet." 

Visit the sculptor's studio. Watch that grow- 
ing statue ; how long the time between the ideal 
form as it stands in the artist's conception and 
the actual realization in the complete figure. 
What cost of unwearied diligence, careful meas- 
urements, constant alterations, painful toil. 
Even so with the Divine Man enstatued within 
us. How slowly figurated. How inadequate 
our first conceptions of him. How many mis- 
takes to correct. How many discoveries to make. 
How countless the touches with which the fingers 
of the soul must shape the godlike statue which 
is to hallow and glorify her shrine. 

Thirdly, to Painting : Beauty is the divine 
Form ; graces are human figurations. I am aware 
that our great master in artistic literature, John 
Ruskin, has said : 



40 LIFE AND LIGHT 

My impression is that up to the present moment the best 
religious art has been rather a fruit and attendant sign of 
sincere Christianity than a promoter of, or help to it. More, I 
think, has always been done for God by few words than many 
pictures, and more by few acts than many words. Sometimes, 
indeed, the love of this form of art is the mask under which 
a thirst for morbid excitement will pass itself for religion. 

On the other hand, I remember that this same 
great master of thoughts, as well as of words, 
has also said : 

In my opinion, sacred art, so far from being exhausted, has 
yet to attain the development of its highest branches ; and 
the task or privilege yet remains for mankind to produce an 
art which shall be at once skilful and entirely sincere. The 
histories of the Bible are, in my opinion, waiting to be 
painted. Moses has never been painted ; Elijah, never j 
Gideon never ; Isaiah never. What single example does the 
reader remember of painting, which suggests so much as the 
faintest shadow of these people or their deeds ? Strong men 
in armor, or aged men with flowing beards, he may remem- 
ber who, when he looked at his Louvre or Uffizi catalogue, 
he found were intended to stand for Moses or for David. 

Now I would go farther than Ruskin himself 
in this latter paragraph, and say that, in my judg- 
ment, painting has yet a great mission to accom- 
plish in the domain of worship. I feel sure that 
the God who himself is light, and in whom there 



FORMS AND FIGURES 41 

is no darkness at all, and who has disfracted his 
own whiteness through the prism of his own cre- 
ation into the various colors of his various natural 
objects — the red of his rose, the green of his 
grass, the blue of his sky — has still a sacred mis- 
sion for his colors in the service of his sanctuary 
— the red of his love, the green of his life, the 
blue of his heaven. 

However this may be, do not, I pray you — let 
me say in passing — misuse God's colors ; for they 
are holy. Never use your brush to pander to what 
in us is low — the coarse, the mean, the unlovely, 
the impure ; ever use it to chasten and heighten 
and strengthen what in us is best — the things 
that are true, and honorable, and just, and pure, 
and lovely, and of good report. For instance, 
were I an artist, I do not think I would ever 
paint a monster, or demon, or ruffian, or hag, or 
satyr, or sybarite, or bacchante, or cyprian, or 
even a nudity. Moreover, I believe that the 
time is coming when it will be considered artistic 
in painting the picture of a good man, not only 
to portray him accurately, so that his likeness 
shall be easily recognizable, but also to portray 
him — so to speak — transcendently, that is, at the 
crest of his good possibilities. What a sad testi- 



42 LIFE AND LIGHT 

mony to the fall of human nature that we justify 
and enjoy caricatures of our public men, but 
would criticise transfigurations of them, as being 
sentimental and visionary. 

As the architecture and the sculpture of which 
I have spoken is spiritual, belonging to the 
cathedral of character ; so also is the painting 
of which I am now speaking. God's beauty is 
the archetypal Form ; man's excellencies are the 
antitypal figurations. This application of our 
theme to painting, it seems to me, is especially 
appropriate. For, while painting appeals chiefly 
to the sense of beauty, it is God himself who is 
the primal, archetypal, essential, infinite Beauty. 
How often we read in his own Book of the 
" beauty of holiness " ; and God is holiness itself. 
For there is an inward world of beauty even 
more truly than an outward world. As Mrs. 
Browning, in her " Sonnet to a Child Asleep " 
sings : " Folded eyes see brighter colors than 
the open ever do." 

There are beautiful moral shapes and hues 
and sounds and motions which are beyond the 
touch of mortal pencil. Even pagan Socrates 
felt this, and said : "I pray thee, O God, that I 
may be beautiful within." There is the beauty of 



FORMS AND FIGURES 43 

adoration, thanksgiving, confession, supplication, 
aspiration, communion ; in one word, the beauty 
of character. Aye, "the king's daughter is all 
glorious within." And moral beauty, like physical, 

Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, 
But is when unadorned, adorned the most. 

And holiness is the culmination of beauty ; 
consecration is the acme of perfection. Worship 
Jehovah, then, in the beauty of holiness. Or as 
a modern poet quaintly phrases it : 

Straight is the line of duty, 
Curved is the line of beauty ; 
Follow the one, and thou shalt see 
The other ever following thee. 

Fourthly, to Literature : Trtith is the divine 
Form ; words are human figurations. 

Words are the most wonderful of things : And 
Jesus Christ himself is the divine, archetypal, 
true, eternal Word. " In the beginning was the 
Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
Word was God" (John i : i). 

The Divine Man is Deity's eternal alphabet, 
from eternity to eternity God's every inter- 
mediate letter. And just because Jesus Christ 



44 LIFE AND LIGHT 

was and is and ever will be the Word of God — 
that is, God in human expression, articulation, 
manifestation — the express image in Deity's sub- 
stance, the very impress of his person, he, 
Jesus Christ, was and is and ever will be the 
Truth. And therefore by his own words and 
works the world and the universe is year by year, 
century by century, aeon by aeon, justifying him 
— the Word of God — more and more. 

And as Jesus Christ is the Divine Form of 
truth, so human language is true in proportion 
as it is figurated from him. This in fact is the 
reason why language is such a sacred gift. The 
Creator has bestowed it on man that it may serve 
as the shrine and organ and disburser of truth. 
For it is by means of words that men can under- 
stand the truth, and convey it to one another, 
and so co-work in building up society. Language 
is the bridge between man and man ; it is the 
circulating medium of human exchange — the 
exchange of human thoughts, sentiments, plans. 
Language is the blood of mankind, flowing 
through its arteries and veins, making all man- 
kind one human corporation or body, converting 
the numberless human units into the one human 
unity, all men into one Man. Hence language, 



FORMS AND FIGURES 45 

in order to its being true to its great mission, 
must itself be true — that is, modeled after the 
divine pattern of Him who is truth itself. Here is 
the secret of a genuine, wholesome, abiding, per- 
fect literature. That literature is the most con- 
summate which is the most imbued with the spirit 
of Him who is the divine Word become flesh. 

Let me apply this. Are you looking forward 
to public life, preparing yourself to become 
a preacher, a lecturer, a lawyer, a statesman ? 
Your oratory will be true and wholesome and 
powerful in proportion as it is vocal with the 
eloquence of Him who taught as never man spake. 
Are you contemplating a literary career ? Your 
publications will be true and ennobling and gen- 
uinely classical in proportion as you use your 
rhetoric for the praise of God in the weal of man. 
In brief, you will be successful figurators of 
words in proportion as you are followers of Him 
who is the Form of Truth. In the day when he 
shall judge the quick and dead, may it be said of 
each one of us : " Thou also art a Galilean : for 
thy speech betray eth thee/' 

Lastly, to Music : Harmony is the divine Form ; 
melodies are human figurations. 

Let me first say a few words about devotion 



46 LIFE AND LIGHT 

and poetry. All deep feeling is essentially poeti- 
cal. It is so in all lands ; it has been so in all 
ages. All deep emotion, alike of joy and of 
grief, instinctively yearns for the accompaniment 
of sound and measure. Hence the paeans of 
Miriam and Hannah and Mary ; hence the 
laments of Job and David and Jeremiah. Even 
the Delphian pythoness was wont to breathe 
forth her oracle in hexameter. All this is pre- 
eminently true of religious feeling. For the 
truest devotion is the highest poetry. Accord- 
ingly, the Bible is in way of eminence a book of 
poems, and the Psalter of the Bible has ever 
been the favorite praise-book of the church. 
What does not the church also owe in way of 
devotion to the ancient doxologies and hymns ; 
such as Gloria in Excelsis, Gloria Patri, Te 
Deum, Ter Sanctus, Veni Creator Spiritus ? To 
the thoughtful worshiper few things are more 
inspiring and sublime than the sense of joining 
in strains thus centuries old. What does not the 
Church also owe in way of worship to Greek 
Anatolius, to Latin Ambrose, to French Bernard, 
to German Luther, to English Watts, to Ameri- 
can Palmer ? Ah, here is the real concord of the 
ages ; here is the true ecumenical. 



FORMS AND FIGURES AH 

And as there is a profound relation between 
devotion and poetry, so there is a profound rela- 
tion between devotion and music. 

Devotion borrows music's tone, 
And music takes devotion's wing ; 

And, like the bird that hails the sun, 
They soar to heaven and, soaring, sing. 

But the music, not less than the feeling and 
the words, must be religious (Eph. 5:19); sing- 
ing with grace in our hearts unto God (Col. 3 : 
16), making melody unto the Lord. 

But devotion is even more than a song ; devo- 
tion is also a life. And here even the deaf and 
dumb may sing, singing and making melody in 
their hearts unto the Lord. Oh, how many spirit- 
ual Beethovens there are ! 

There are in this loud, stunning tide 

Of human care and crime, 
With whom the melodies abide 

Of the everlasting chime ; 
Who carry music in their heart 
Through dusky lane and mart, 
Plying their daily task with busier feet, 
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat. 

—Keble's " Christian Year." 



48 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Yes, there is such a thing as rhyme of life ; an 
inward life-psalm, and so an outward heaven the 
phone, earth the antiphone. Our Father, thy 
will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. The 
real music after all is the anthem of daily life, 
the antiphone of daily character, the doxology 
of daily service. 

I have discussed with painful meagreness a 
transcendent theme. I have tried to show that 
the Art of arts is to shape life according to the 
pattern shewn on the Mount. Thus living, we 
shall build a celestial house ; we shall shape a 
heavenly statue ; we shall paint the incomparable 
beauty ; we shall speak the ineffable language ; 
we shall sing the undying song. 



V 

The Incidental Christ 



Though truths in manhood darkly join, 

Deep seated in our mystic frame, 

We yield all blessing to the name 
Of Him that made them current coin. 

And so the Word had breath and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds, 
In loveliness of perfect deeds, 

More strong than all poetic thought. 

— In Memoriam. 




V 



HILE there is but one divine Christ, 
there are two ways of conceiving of 
that one Christ, i. e. } an Incidental and 
an Essential. 

The Incidental Christ is the outward Christ of 
circumstance ; contingent ; chronological ; geo- 
graphical ; racial ; hereditary ; temperamental ; 
educational ; ecclesiastical ; theological. This is 
the Christ of most biographers ; the Christ of 
nationality, — the Christ of the Hebrew John, the 
Roman Paul, the Greek Athanasius, the Latin 
Augustine, the German Luther, the French 
Calvin, the Dutch Arminius, the Old Eng- 
land Spurgeon, the New England Bushnell, 
the Hindu Mozoomdar, the American Hodge. 
In brief, this is the Christ of environment ; of 
our own temperamental conception, our educa- 
tional training, of our own desire ; the Christ 
whom our own longings robe, vesture, image 

forth to consciousness. 

si 



52 LIFE AND LIGHT 

But environments alter ; incidentals are good 
as settings, but circumstances change ; we our- 
selves change. The Essential Christ is the in- 
ward Christ who is therefore independent of 
circumstances, or conditions of time and space : 
the absolute, changeless, eternal, ever-contem- 
poraneous, uncontingent Christ ; the immortal 
Christ of character, the divine Christ of the 
Incarnation ; that is, God's embodiment in the 
Son of Man. How often is this divine Christ 
obscured, hidden by environments and tempor- 
alities. We recognize Jesus the Man, but not 
Jesus the Christ. He stands among us, but "we 
know him not,'' except as casual, incidental. 

He is in history ; as center of chronology, 
migrations, institutions, legislations, progres- 
sions ; yet to many historians he may be but a 
racial, geographical Christ. 

He is in philosophy ; as center of nature, mat- 
ter, law, order, cosmos ; yet to some scientists 
he may be but a transient, phenomenal Christ. 

He is in Christianity ; as center of Gospels, 
Acts, Epistles, Covenant, Church ; yet to some he 
may be but an ecclesiastical, theological Christ. 

He is in art ; as center of letters, poetry, 
essays, biographies, of music, painting, sculpture; 



THE INCIDENTAL CHRIST 53 

yet to some artists he may be but a contingent, 
local Christ. 

He is in society ; as center of mankind, of 
individuals, of outcasts, of monopolists ; yet to 
some sociologists he may be but an incidental, 
temporal Christ. 

Suppose we endeavor to translate the Christ 
of the past into the Christ of the present ; the 
Christ of Palestine into the Christ of America ; 
the Christ of the Hebrew into the Christ of the 
English ; the Christ of idiom into the Christ of 
language ; the Christ of theology into the Christ 
of ethics ; the Christ of ritual into the Christ of 
practice ; the Christ of parable into the Christ 
of science ; the Christ of letter into the Christ 
of spirit ; the Christ of form into the Christ of 
life ; the Christ of the church into the Christ of 
the kingdom ; the Christ of yesterday into the 
Christ of to-day; the Christ of to-day into the 
Christ of to-morrow. 

Do we not find the Essential Christ "the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever"? Ever adjust- 
able, because absolute ; ever flexible, because 
changeless ; the preterit and futurist of all 
existence. 

Christ formed within us the crescent hope of 



54 LIFE AND LIGHT 

character, becomes the life-element ; the motive 
power, ever unfolding all incipient possibilities ; 
ever developing all capacities ; allowing for all 
personal equations ; healing all discords ; enno- 
bling all weakness ; transfiguring all errors. 

Thus drawn by his graces into the sphere of 
his royal personality the visibles vanish, the 
invisibles emerge ; the tangibles dissolve, the 
intangibles solidify ; the vast dwindles, the 
small expands ; the near recedes, the far ap- 
proaches ; and the dynamic force of an endless 
growth swells into the full-orbed glory of the 
Essential, Eternal Christ. 



VI 

The Way, the Truth, 
the Life' 



1 Published from stenographic report. 

£ 



We faintly hear, we dimly see, 

In differing phrase we pray ; 
But, dim or clear, we own in Thee, 

The Light, the Truth, the Way ! 

—J. G. Whittier. 



Without the Way there is no going ; 
Without the Truth there is no knowing ; 
Without the Life there is no living. 

—Thomas a Kempis. 




VI 

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the 
life : no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. 

—John 14 : 6. 

ISTAKES have often been the occa- 
sion of the profoundest utterances of 
truth. Christ had just been saying: 
" I go away to prepare a place for you ; and 
when I have gone away and prepared a place 
for you, I will come again, and will take you to 
myself; that where I am, ye also may be. And 
ye know the way whither I go." Thomas, char- 
acteristically judging by material tests, construes 
literally : 

" Lord, we know not whither thou goest: how 
then do we know the way?" Jesus saith to him : 
" I am the way, and the truth, and the life ; no 
man cometh to the Father but through me." 
Thus the stupidity of Thomas was the occasion 
of one of the most magnificent deliverances of 
the eternal Word. 

57 



58 LIFE AND LIGHT 

1. "I am the Way." In what sense? In every 
sense. 

i. In the sense of beginning. He is the door 
of entrance into his own kingdom ; the gate of 
the soul's access to God. 

" Through him we have our access" — introduc- 
tion (Eph. 2 : 1 8). " Boldness to enter into the 
holy place," etc. (Heb. io : 19). Jesus is the true 
ladder between earth and heaven, the true Scala 
Sancta of our devotions, 

The great world's altar stairs 

That slope through darkness up to God. 

By his incarnation, life, teachings, and death, 
he reveals the mystery of existence, awakens 
the sense of God's loving Fatherhood, gives 
the impulse of obedience to the divine will, and 
the hope of higher life, of knowledge, and com- 
munion with the Father. 

2. In the sense of continuing. He is not only 
the beginning ; he not only shows the way ; he 
is the Way itself. 

He is the conditioning element of all things, 
the sphere and medium of all existence. " In 
him were created all things, those in the heavens, 
those on the earth, the visible and the invisible, 



THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE 59 

whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, 
or powers ; all things have been created through 
him, and for him, and he is before all things, 
and in him all things subsist." Nature is 
not alongside him : Nature is in him as its 
sphere and vehicle — constituted, systemed, kept 
in everlasting equipoise in him. He is the 
medium not less than the source and the end of 
all existence. 

How significant are those frequent scriptural 
expressions which represent the Christian life as 
a way or walk ! As then we receive the Lord 
Jesus, so let us walk in him ! He is the true 
line of direction — the king's highway of holi- 
ness ; the saint's promenade — the sacred, majestic 
aisle along which the church catholic and im- 
mortal are marching up to perfectness. The 
emphasis Jesus put on himself as the Way, made 
the word a synonym for Christianity. 

No wonder the early Christians loved to talk 
of "the Way." For example : " If he [Saul] found 
any that were of the Way " (Acts 9:2). " Speak- 
ing evil of the Way" (19 : 9). " Arose no small 
stir concerning the Way" (19 : 23). "I persecuted 
those of the Way unto death" (22 : 4). "After 
the Way which they call a sect" (24 : 14). "Felix, 



60 LIFE AND LIGHT 

having more exact knowledge concerning the 
Way" (24: 23). 

3. In the sense of ending. He is not only the 
source and medium, he is the goal, the terminus ; 
the "author and finisher." The Way leads us 
into the Truth, eternal and unchanging — into 
the Life. 

" I go to prepare a place for you," etc. Christ 
is himself the fountain, arena, meaning ; final 
cause of all things from atom to vastest star, be- 
ing in himself Nature's origin, Nature's means, 
Nature's goal. The center of gravity and pivot 
for the universe, he yet fills all things ; raying 
every possible radius to utmost periphery ; or, 
to use Pascal's striking paradox, his " center is 
everywhere, his circumference is nowhere." 

II. I am the Truth. 

1. Jesus Christ is the truth or reality in dis- 
tinction from prophecy and type. He is the ful- 
filler and realizer of all figures and shadows. 
Thus : He is the True Light ; he is the original, 
underived, archetypal Light, of which John was 
but a reflection and suggestion. He is the True 
Bread ; not that the manna of the wilderness 
was not bread, not that the wheat of our own 
tables is not bread ; but he is the Real Bread of 



THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE 61 

which manna and wheat are but signs. These 
are but symbols : He is the Reality. He is the 
True Tabernacle. Not that the tabernacle of 
the wilderness was not a sanctuary ; but he is 
the original, archetypal temple ; the True Taber- 
nacle which the Lord pitched and not man, and 
to which all other tabernacles, whether of Sinai, 
of Moriah, or of Christendom, are preliminary 
and subservient, and of which they are but 
figures and signs. They are types ; he is the 
Antitype. The phenomenal is the parable ; he 
is the interpretation thereof. 

2. Jesus Christ is the truth or reality in dis- 
tinction from mere facts. Facts are physical, 
belonging to the realm of matter ; truths are 
spiritual, belonging to the realm of morals. 
Nature teaches facts ; the Bible teaches truths. 
Facts are conditional, temporal, local, secular. 
There is no necessary morality in the facts 
of arithmetic, chemistry, geometry, chronology; 
but truths are unconditional, eternal, universal. 
There can be no truth except in connection with 
a personal moral nature. Jesus, dying as a man, 
in a Roman province, may remain but a historic 
fact ; Jesus, dying as King of kings to redeem 
mankind, is a truth of incalculable personal 



62 LIFE AND LIGHT 

value. Calvary changed the trend of human 
history. 

Jesus Christ is the Truth in that he is the 
meaning of facts. It is a great thing to know 
facts, or what Is ; it is a greater thing to know 
truth or what the Is is For. Science tends to 
be retrospective, searching out antecedents as 
the basis or at least conditioning element of 
what is : Religion is prospective, asking what 
the is means, and what its final issue. Science, 
regarding what is, as the inevitable progenitor 
of what is to be, and content with this iron bar 
of entail, has for its watchword Mitst. 

Religion, regarding what has been, and is, and 
is to be, as means to end, and exulting in the 
prerogative of choice, has for her watchword 
Ought Thus at a single immeasurable bound, 
she springs from necessity to duty, from matter 
to spirit, from earth to heaven ; from nature as 
a means and man as the end, to nature under 
man as a means and God as the end — God in 
Christ, the final cause of both nature and man. 

3. Jesus Christ is the truth or reality in distinc- 
tion from the apparent. There is an invisible 
world more truly than there is a visible. The 
things which are seen are temporal, but the 



THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE 63 

things which are not seen are eternal. Hence 
we are bidden to walk by faith, not by sight. 
What, in fact, is faith but transfigured imagina- 
tion ? One of the most felicitous instances of 
masterly diction in the realm of science is Pro- 
fessor Tyndall's discourse delivered before the 
British Association in 1870 on "The Scientific 
Use of the Imagination." In this, as often else- 
where, he earnestly bids us exercise the power 
of "visualizing the invisible." That is to say, 
he bids us exercise faith in the unseen. That 
magnificent theory of modern science, the wave 
theory, is a palmary instance of faith. No man 
ever saw and, by reason of the very terms of the 
atomic hypothesis, ever will see, an atom of 
ether. Yet the whole scientific world unhesi- 
tatingly proceeds on the assumption that there 
is this universal ether. The theory is even said 
to be demonstrated, and I do not for a moment 
question the assertion, because it perfectly ac- 
counts for so many various phenomena otherwise 
inexplicable. For instance, phenomena of radia- 
tion, absorption, reflection, refraction, polariza- 
tion, etc. Allow me also the scientific use of the 
imagination. I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
although he has never come within the range of 



64 LIFE AND LIGHT 

my natural senses. I believe in him because he 
accounts for moral phenomena otherwise inex- 
plicable. He accounts for my moral nature, my 
experiences, my aspirations, my joys, my victories. 
" I endure as seeing him who is invisible." He 
is the real world behind the phenomenal, giving 
to the phenomenal whatever of worth and abiding 
glory it has. He is the substrate of all existence. 
In him all things were created and in him all 
things subsist. He only can answer Pilate's 
question : " What is truth ? " He is himself the 
Truth ; God's universal Verily, Verily ; God's 
eternal Yea and Amen. 

III. I am the Life. 

i. yesus Christ is the life of all animate exist- 
ence, alike vegetable, animal, human, angelic. Not 
only have all things been created by him and 
through him and for him, all things are subsist- 
ing in him. He is the universal sub-stans, the 
sphere and continuing element of all that lives. 
Particularly is this true of man. He is the life 
of our bodily nature. Poor Marthas may weep 
by the sepulchres of dead brothers, but Jesus shall 
say, " I am the resurrection and the life." And 
an apostle shall echo, " Since through man came 
death, through man also shall come the resurrec- 



THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE 65 

tion of the dead, for as in Adam all die, so also in 
Christ will all be made alive." 

2. Jesus Christ is the life of all spiritual exist- 
ence. He, and he only, is the vitalizing, immor- 
talizing principle. I enter into no debate con- 
cerning man's natural immortality. Enough that 
I echo Jesus' own saying, " God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
every one who believeth in him may not perish, 
but may have everlasting life." Life, life, life, 
is the keynote of his gospel ; it is precisely this 
which makes his words and career a gospel, a 
glad tidings. 

" I came that they might have life and that 
they might have it more abundantly" (John 
10 : 10). 

'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
O life, not death, for which we pant ; 
More life and fuller that I want. 

Life holy; independent; luminous, manly, new; 
patient ; resolute ; spiritual ; wise, youthful. Here 
is the secret of Jesus' advent, mission, life, teach- 
ings, death, resurrection, ascension, return. He 
gives "the power of an endless life," the power 
that conquering circumstances, heredity, sin, 



66 LIFE AND LIGHT 

death, brings the spirit into conscious commu- 
nion with the Father, transfigured into his image ; 
the cumulative force of all unfolded capacities, 
enthusiasm, faith, goodness, hope, imagination, 
insight, inspiration, joy, knowledge, love, manli- 
ness, purity, reason, righteousness, solidity, true- 
ness, worship. And this Christ-force is not 
mere endlessness of existence, but the cumu- 
lativeness of endless growth ; not mere static 
perpetuity, but dynamic immortality of love. 

IV. "No one Cometh to the Father but 
through Me." 

Men there are, and they are mournfully many, 
who perpetually talk of God's Fatherhood and 
yet boastfully say they have no need of the 
Christ. On the other hand we are told, and 
this on an authority the same as that which 
asserts God's Fatherhood, " He who hath not 
the Son, hath not the Father." And that Son 
himself saith, " He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father." And no one cometh to the 
Father but through the Son. True, Liberalism 
says, "There are many ways to the Father." 
The Truth says, "I am the Way." Philosophy 
says, "There is another way; it is through devel- 
opment." The Truth says, " I am the Way." 



THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE 67 

Ecclesiasticism says, " There is another way; it 
is the Church." The Truth says, " I am the 
Way." Sacramentism says, " There is another 
way; it is through the sacraments." The Truth 
says, " I am the Way." Jesus the Nazarene, 
Deity Incarnate, is the one and the only door 
and way to the Father. All who seek to climb 
over into God's Fatherhood in any other way are 
thieves and robbers. 

Thus is Jesus Christ the Way, the Truth, the 
Life, the Gate, the Path, the Goal, the All in All. 

O Almighty God, whom truly to know is ever- 
lasting life, grant us perfectly to know thy Son, 
Jesus Christ, to be the Way, the Truth, and the 
Life ; that, following the steps of thy holy apos- 
tles, Saint Philip and Saint James, we may stead- 
fastly walk in the way that leadeth to eternal 
life, through the same thy Son, Jesus Christ our 
Lord. Amen. 



VII 

The Optimism of Jesus 



That soul 
Hath done with sadness, which knows Christ aright ; 
Not as fear reads, but as quick love reveals. 

— Sir Edwin Arnold. 




VII 

HERE are two kinds of human esti- 
mate. First, there is the pessimistic 
kind ; it searches for the worst ; it de- 
tects, because it loves to detect, blemishes, crook- 
edness, weakness, infidelity, paganism, apostasy 
— in one word, demonism. The other kind of 
human estimate is the optimistic kind ; it searches 
for the best ; it discerns, because it loves to dis- 
cern, breadth, length, height, strength, beauty, 
majesty — in one word, angelism. The pessimist 
searches for towers of Babel ; the optimist 
searches for the city of God. 

Thank God, the Saviour of mankind, and 
especially of his church, was — I speak it most 
reverently — an optimist. Had he been a pessim- 
ist, taking us in the trough of our weakness 
rather than at the crest of our possibilities, 
where would have been to-day our hope of the 
possibility of perfected character and the bliss- 
ful immortality? In fact, Christianity reverses 

r 71 



72 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Darwinism, or rather that part of Darwinism 
which teaches the doctrine of the survival of 
the fittest in the struggle for existence. The 
Founder of Christianity came not to call the 
righteous, but sinners to repentance — searching 
for and especially welcoming those whom society 
spurns as the unfittest. He was known as the 
friend of publicans and sinners, receiving them 
and eating with them. He did not stand on the 
shore and wait till people floated up to him on 
the flood-tide of prosperity ; he himself swam 
out after them as they floated down from him on 
the ebb-tide of adversity. He came to seek as 
well as to save that which is lost. No breaker 
of bruised reeds was our King ; no despiser of 
storm-shaken souls ; no crusher of stumbling 
hearts ; no trampler on prostrate characters. 
For the Spirit of the Lord Jehovah was upon 
him, because he anointed him to preach good 
tidings to the poor, to proclaim release to the 
captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to 
set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim 
the acceptable year of the Lord. No quencher 
of smoking flax is our King ; no uprooter of dis- 
couraged souls ; no extinguisher of the divine 
possibilities existing in every human soul, how- 



THE OPTIMISM OF JESUS 73 

ever imbruted ; no quencher of the dim light of 
nature in the pagan's heart, of the dying flame 
of conscience in the American infidel, of the 
waning embers in the disheartened Christian, of 
the expiring spark in the fallen wanderer. In- 
stead of extinguishing the flickering wick, he 
stoops down to fan it, establishing the things 
that remain, which were ready to die. And 
therefore in his name the Gentiles are hoping, 
and earth's weary outcasts finding in him their 
refuge and heaven. 

Thus Jesus of Nazareth was in the preemi- 
nent sense an optimist. Peering down into the 
lowest grades of our fallen humanity, his gener- 
ous vision was the first to discern beneath wreck 
and rubbish any sense of right however dim, any 
idea of duty however faint, any yearning after 
better things however incipient and nebulous. 
Do you ask for instances of his optimism ? Re- 
call how he sought out obscure fishermen of 
Galilee, and transfigured them into apostles of 
Christendom ; how he summoned and rescued 
Matthew, transfiguring the despised publican of 
Capernaum into his own apostolic biographer ; 
how he sought and saved Zaccheus, transfigur- 
ing the sinful publican of Jericho into a true son 



74 LIFE AND LIGHT 

of Abraham ; how he rescued the sinful woman 
of Jacob's well and the outcast woman of the 
Pharisee's banquet, transfiguring them into 
trophies of his redeeming grace ; how he deliv- 
ered the unfortunate Mary of Magdala, trans- 
figuring this most wretched victim of demoniacal 
possession into his most adoring ministrant ; how 
he forgave the apostate fisherman of Bethsaida, 
transfiguring Simon, cowering son of flesh and 
blood, into Peter, intrepid son of everlasting 
rock ; how he saved the murderous Pharisee of 
Jerusalem, transfiguring Saul his persecutor into 
Paul his missionary. 

Be it for us to follow our King's divine philos- 
ophy of life ; to seek eagerly for the possible good, 
the hidden Best behind every surface repellence 
of the unlovely and the unattractive. Let the 
same " thought" be in us that was in Christ Jesus, 
for as Robert Browning truly writes : 

As is your sort of mind, so is your sort of search, 
You'll find what you desire. 

And finding, if even but a faint and blurred 
image of our Father in heaven, you have the 
King's heart of optimism — immortal love. 



VIII 
Evolution 



In tracts of fluent heat began, 

And grew to seeming-random forms, 

The seeming prey of cyclic storms, 
Till at the last arose the man ; 

Who throve and branched from clime to clime, 

The herald of a higher race, 

And of himself in higher place, 
If so he type this work of time 

Within himself, from more to more. 

— In Memoriam. 



VIII 




MEANING OF " EVOLUTION " 



ET us understand exactly what we mean 
by this word " evolution," for clear- 
ness of conception here is absolutely 
essential. Indeed, it is quite astonishing to 
notice how loosely many intelligent persons use 
such words as "evolution, development, variety, 
species," etc. Look, for example, at this word 
" species." A species is a purely subjective 
thing, an ens rationis, a mental outline, an ideal 
padlock. Who ever saw or touched a species ? 
To talk, then, of the origin, or transmutation 
of species is to talk of a subjective idea, which 
never has had and never can have any actual, 
objective existence in the world of matter. If 
there is ever any "transmutation," the trans- 
mutation is a concept existing only in the mind 
of the conceiver. In other words, the affair is 
an affair of metaphysics, not of physics. Here, 

77 



78 LIFE AND LIGHT 

as elsewhere in such matters, let us abide by the 
glorious rigor of the scientific method. Physical 
science, we are solemnly told, deals only with 
objective, concrete realities ; it has nothing to do 
with abstractions or concepts ; not but that con- 
cepts or abstract terms are useful, and even indis- 
pensable, as tools, or "working hypotheses." 
And with concepts as such — that is, with abstract 
terms as instruments of thought and investiga- 
tion — physical science does have to do. Never- 
theless, concepts are not objective existences ; 
abstract terms are not concrete realities. And 
"species" is an abstract term or concept. Ac- 
cordingly, the only evolution or transmutation 
which physical science, as an affair of observa- 
tion and induction, can consistently consider, is 
the evolution or transmutation of an objective, 
concrete, definite plant or animal. 

And precisely here, where the proof should be 
decisive, is the weak point in the theory of evolu- 
tion. And no chain is stronger than its weakest 
link. Look at this very word "evolution." It 
is another lamentable instance of the loose use 
of terms. To "evolve" is to unroll, unfold, de- 
velop. But you cannot unroll what had not 
been inrolled ; you cannot unfold what was not 



EVOLUTION 79 

infolded ; you cannot develop what was not en- 
veloped ; you cannot evolve what has not been 
involved. You cannot unfold a ton out of an 
ounce. You cannot account for the origin or 
unfolding of man by evolving him out of a 
primary bioplastic cell ; for he — man — was never 
in the cell at all, not even as a prisoner. 

But while I cannot accept evolution as being the 
philosophical cause or initial force which accounts 
for the progress of life, there is a kind of " evo- 
lution " which I must and do accept : it is an ideal 
evolution ; that is to say, the evolution along the 
ideal axis of a divine plan and purpose ; for ex- 
ample, the unfolding of a leonine ovum into the 
adult lion is an evolution along the ideal axis of a 
vertebrate mammal. It is not, as atheistic evolu- 
tionists hold, that the pickerel was transformed 
by vertebral metamorphosis into the tortoise, the 
tortoise into the owl, the owl into the gorilla, the 
gorilla into man. It is as theistic evolutionists 
hold, that pickerel, tortoise, owl, gorilla, man, 
are divine modifications of the general archetypal 
vertebra for specific purposes, adjusting the phys- 
ical application of the archetypal ideal vertebra 
to new necessities as occasioned by new condi- 
tions or environments. I believe that the process 



So LIFE AND LIGHT 

of creation was, and that the process of evolution 
is, the unrolling of a divine plan or conception. 
" Premeditation prior to Creation "■ — this is the 
favorite formula of Louis Agassiz in his famous 
"Essay on Classification." I believe that the Bible 
story of origins is the story of the unfolding of a 
divine plan or idea; ascending from the creation of 
matter-atoms, along the pathway of soil and plant 
and animal, to man. The advance may have 
been, and in many cases doubtless was, genetic ; 
but the advance, in so far as it was an " evolu- 
tion," was ideal. And not only was evolution, 
in the proper sense of the term, true of the orig- 
inal creative process, evolution is also still true 
of every living thing to-day, whether plant or 
animal or man. The acorn unfolds into the oak, 
the babe into the man, the man into the 
Christian, along the ideal axis of a divine 
thought or plan. Evolution, in the sense of 
physical, objective unfolding of protoplast into 
man, is false. Evolution, in the sense of ideal, 
purposeful unfolding of protoplast into man, is 
true. And science has it for her stately vocation 
to try to read the Creator's thoughts before they 
are materialized into his things. 

Moral movement, i. e., progress, is inevitable. 



EVOLUTION 81 

Progress is the great watchword of this century. 
Excelsior is written in the heart and urges on- 
ward. There is no such champion of progress as 
St. Paul, and no such exponent of evolution as 
the evangel of Jesus Christ. Darwin busies 
himself with what man has been ; Paul, with 
what he can be. Darwin dwells upon the past 
and present ; Paul looks toward the future. 
Darwin's evolution ends in himself ; Paul's evolu- 
tion ends in Christ. What is prophetic in Christ 
is historic in man. Christ is the perfected, con- 
summate Man — The Son of Man. 



The Sacred Use of Words 



Is there, then, no death for a word once spoken ? 
Was never a deed but left its token 
Written on tables never broken ? 

Do the elements subtle reflections give ? 
Do pictures of all ages live 
On nature's infinite negative ? 

— Whittier. 




IX 

ERE I asked what I thought was the 
most wonderful faculty in man, I should 
answer : The faculty of language. For, 
consider for a moment what a word is. A word 
consists of two elements, which not only have 
nothing in common but are diametrically op- 
posed. Suppose it is a spoken — that is, an 
audible word; as such it is but a sound — an 
aerial vibration striking tympanum and brain. 
Suppose it is a written — that is, a visible word ; 
as such it is but a shape on a piece of paper. 
Yet in either case, whether an audible word or 
a written word, it is also an enshrined, infigured, 
so to speak, materialized idea. A word is a 
symbolized thought, an embodied idea. The 
same material air that wafts a leaf may enshrine 
and waft to the percipient mind an immaterial 
idea. Language marries thought and matter, 
or rather thought and thought in the sphere 

of matter. A word may incarnate the vastest 

85 



S6 LIFE AND LIGHT 

conceptions, as e.g., an astronomical fact ; or the 
subtilest conceptions, as e. g., a biological hy- 
pothesis. Again, words conserve the immaterial 
past, turning it into an immortal heirloom ; a 
word carries us back to Washington, to Shakes- 
peare, to Mohammed, to Cicero, to Plato, to 
Abraham, to Adam. Words are the manes of 
past centuries. You think that the phonograph 
is a wonderful thing, and so it is ; but the phono- 
graph does not compare in wonderfulness with 
the most careless, insignificant word which it 
echoes and preserves. Even the childish prattle 
of the nursery is more marvelous than the most 
surprising metamorphosis in chemistry ; for it 
turns vibrations of material, unconscious air into 
immaterial, intelligible, influencing ideas. Yes, 
words are the most wonderful of things. 

Not only is the power of words tremendous, 
their power is also immortal. Words are not 
the evanescent sounds we sometimes fancy them 
to be. For what is a word ? A spoken word is 
a series of sounds, so arranged as to embody 
an idea. And what is a sound ? A sound, 
to answer roughly, is a disturbance of the air, 
so that certain vibrations, or waves, reach the 
mind through the ear and brain. Now it is 



THE SACRED USE OF WORDS 87 

one of the solemn teachings of science, and 
of vastest import, that no atom of matter can 
undergo any change whatever without affect- 
ing each adjacent atom ; nor can these adjacent 
atoms be affected without affecting, in turn, 
every atom adjacent to each of them ; and so 
on until the original impulse, or change, started 
by the first atom is propagated through im- 
mensity, so that the whole material creation is 
in a different state from what it would have been 
had not the disturbance of that first atom taken 
place. Nor is this all : inasmuch as these atoms, 
thus disturbed throughout the material universe, 
keep acting and reacting on each other per- 
petually, it is evident that the effects of the 
slightest atomic change are not only propagated 
throughout all creation, but are propagated ever- 
lastingly. Thus the slightest word vibrating in 
the air, though it be but a whispered interjection, 
sets in operation a series of changes which un- 
dulate to the very outskirts of creation, rising 
and falling like an everlasting tide. Milton 
utters but scientific truth when he speaks of 

Airy tongues, that syllable men's names 

On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. 

— " Comus." 



88 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Thus the whole material universe, from tiniest 
atom at earth's center to farthest orb in limitless 
space, is a divine phonograph. 

If, then, the scarcely audible rustle of an un- 
conscious aspen leaf sets in inexorable motion 
atom after atom — from leaf to tree, from tree to 
earth, from earth to star, till the whole material 
creation responds in agitation — think you that a 
word, however " idle," spoken by conscious, re- 
sponsible man, will ever die away ? Oh, no ; 
every word you and I have spoken has already 
taken the witness-stand before the Judgment 
Throne, to testify for us or against us. Words 
are immortal ! Is not language, then, a sacred 
trust to be sacredly used ? Dare you put 
your thought into coarse, ill-fitting, degraded 
"slang" ? Dare you use words without consid- 
ering their sequences ? 

Tho* ill-timed truth we might have kept, 
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung ; 

The word we had not sense to say, 
Who knows how grandly it had rung. 

— Edward Rowland Sill. 



X 

An Eirenicon 



That they may all be one ; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in 
thee, that they also may be in us : that the world may believe that thou 
didst send me. _ Jesus Christ 



What it Means and How to Secure It. A 
Message to Christians of All Creeds 

By Dr. George Dana Boardman 

THE coming ideal church, or the kingdom of God, is larger than any 
denomination within it ; as our United States are larger than the 
State of Pennsylvania. Denominationalism still has its place in the 
economy of Christendom ; but that place is no longer in the foreground ; 
that place is henceforth to be in the background. We are still to work 
along denominational lines, but only with a view to the Church as one 
Corporate Whole. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for us? Was 
our baptism into the name of Peter, or John, or Luther, or Calvin, or 
Wesley, or Fox, or Swedenborg, or Bunyan, or Campbell ? No ! One 
is our Master, and all we are brothers, fellow-members of that one body 
of which Christ is the one Head. 

And fellow-members are co-ordinate in function and co-operation. 
If the whole church were only one cyclopian Congregational eye, or one 
colossal Methodist ear, or one gigantic Lutheran nose, or one stupen- 
dous Episcopal hand, or one enormous Presbyterian thumb, or one 
measureless Baptist foot — where were Christ's one, yet many-membered 
body ? But now there be many members, yet but one body. Accord- 
ingly, the Episcopal hand cannot (or at least ought not to) say to the 
Baptist foot, "I have no need of thee." For all Christians form the 
one body of Christ, and each Christian is a functional organ thereof ; 
and the body of Christ is healthy and effective in proportion as each 
Christian faithfully discharges his own organic functions — all the mem- 
bers, whether eye or hand, ear or foot, working together in reciprocal 
co-operation. 



Sent out in 1 89 1. 



XI 

The Unification of 
Christendom 



For all Thy Church, O Lord, we intercede ; 

Make Thou our sad divisions soon to cease ; 
Draw us the nearer each, to each we plead, 

By drawing all to Thee, O Prince of Peace ; 
Thus may we all one Bread, one Body be, 
Through this blest Sacrament of Unity. 

— W. H. Turton. 




XI 

HE problem of ecclesiastical unity is 
a complex, serious problem worthy 
of the profound study of all sons of 
the Kingdom. 

The Ideal Church a Unity. On the one 
hand, the ideal church of God, God's one church 
of transfigured characters, is an ideal unity. St. 
Paul portrays this ideal unity under a sevenfold 
aspect, thus : 

"There is one body, and one Spirit, even as 
also ye were called in one hope of your call- 
ing ; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God 
and Father of all, who is over all, and through 
all, and in all " (Eph. 4 : 4-6). 

Observe that the great apostle uses the nu- 
meral "one" seven times. It is as though he 
had said : 

"There is one Christian church; one Holy 
Spirit ; one heavenly vocation ; one Lord Jesus 
Christ ; one baptism in the one Spirit by 

95 



96 LIFE AND LIGHT 

the one faith into the one church ; one All- 
Father-God." 

The Actual Church a Disunity. On the 
other hand, the actual, organized church of 
Christendom is a painful disunity. Observe 
with grief and shame its divided condition. 
The church ecclesiastical is, literally speaking, a 
church militant on a war footing. Unfortu- 
nately, however, this war footing is an interne- 
cine strife. Instead of her wrestling against the 
dark principalities of the spiritual powers of evil 
in the heavenlies, she is wrestling against her 
own flesh and blood, making schism in her own 
body, tearing asunder the limbs of her own 
personality. 

The spirit of sectarianism, not the mere fact 
that there are sects, alienates the Christian 
brotherhood, setting the members of the one 
great family in Christ against each other ; it 
narrows our spiritual horizon ; it inverts the 
Christian order by exalting ordinances above 
principles, ritual above character ; it caricatures 
truth by magnifying its fractions and minifying 
its integer ; it dissipates spiritual energies in- 
stead of concentrating them ; it arrests moral 
growth. 



THE UNIFICATION OF CHRISTENDOM 97 

Problem of Ecclesiastical Unity. And so 
we pass to ponder the problem of Ecclesiastical 
Unity. How shall we make the church of man 
and the church of Christ — the church of form 
and the church of life — coincident ? How shall 
we adjust man's church to God's Kingdom ? 
How shall we bring about the ideal, promised 
Unity of the Christian Church ? It is a mighty 
problem, as gracious as mighty, wholly worthy of 
the best thought of Christendom. Although in- 
capable of absolute solution, yet, like the famous 
problem of squaring the circle, our problem is 
nevertheless capable of approximations ever 
closer and closer. 

Church Unity Cannot be Secured by De- 
creeing Church Uniformity. Church Unity 
means an inward, organic, so to speak, divinely 
biological life wherein all varieties of organs and 
functions are vitally convergent to one divine 
end. You can organize an external organization 
— this is man's work. You cannot organize an 
internal organism — that is God's work. All at- 
tempts therefore to enact ecclesiastical unity, 
either by decrees of hierarchical conclaves or by 
votes of congregational assemblies, are attempts 
at human manufacture rather than recognitions 



98 LIFE AND LIGHT 

of divine offspring, and therefore must sooner or 
later issue in moral failures. The truth is, all 
attempts at singleness or uniformity of formal or- 
ganization are against all the analogies of living 
nature. Take the plant world : what varieties 
of structures and functions from the cedar of 
Lebanon to the hyssop that springs up by the 
wall ! Take the animal world : all flesh is not 
the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, 
another flesh of beasts, another flesh of birds, 
another flesh of fishes. Take the man world : 
what varieties of races, statures, faculties, tem- 
peraments, customs ! Take the church world : 
what varieties of creeds, polities, gifts, missions, 
graces ! To undertake to decree that there shall 
be but one kind of church organization is as un- 
natural and futile as to undertake to decree that 
there shall be but one kind of plant or one kind 
of animal or one kind of man. Many different 
members, but one common body. 

Unity Cannot be Secured by Abolishing 
Sects. Nor, again, can the church unify herself, 
at least in this aeon, by abolishing sects. In fact, 
I believe that each Christian sect, in so far as it 
really has Christ's own spirit has a divine mis- 
sion of its own. Who would wish to erase from 



THE UNIFICATION OF CHRISTENDOM 99 

the history of Christendom the story of the Wal- 
denses, the Lutherans, the Puritans, the Mora- 
vians, the Jansenists, the Methodists, the Con- 
gregationalists, the Quakers, the Baptists ? For 
all things are ours ; whether Paul, the apostle of 
advance, or Cephas, the apostle of arrest, or 
Apollos, the apostle of culture ; all are ours ; 
and we are Christ's ; and Christ is God's. 

Unity Cannot be Secured by Compromise. 
Nor can the church unify herself by compromise. 
This is the mistake of those unfortunates who 
are afflicted with cardiac hypertrophy or diseased 
enlargement of heart. Compromise is often right 
in matters of policy or method. Compromise is 
always wrong in matters of principle or duty. 
Truth abhors compromise as light abhors dark- 
ness. Truth advances her kingdom by affirma- 
tion, not by evasion ; by victory, not by surren- 
der. If there is in all this world a sacred right, 
it is the right of every human being to have his 
own personal, moral convictions. If there is in 
all this world a sacred responsibility, it is the re- 
sponsibility which every human being has before 
his God and before his fellows for those personal 
convictions. If there is in all this world a sacred 
obligation, it is the obligation which rests on 

it t 



ioo LIFE AND LIGHT 

every human being to be true, at whatever cost, 
to those convictions. For the man who is will- 
ing to surrender his own convictions for the 
sake of " unity" is a man whose convictions for 
the sake of unity, or of anything else, are to be 
distrusted. For he who begins by being false to 
himself will end with being false to everybody 
else. Moreover, the unity which is brought 
about by compromise is not unity at all ; it is 
only a weak, sentimental, flabby uniformity. 

Unity can be Secured only by Compre- 
hension. This idea of comprehension is the 
modern contribution to ecclesiology or the doc- 
trine of the church. The old method was to 
search for similarities ; the new method is to 
recognize diversities. The church's true policy 
here is not rejection, but adjustment ; not insist- 
ence, but assistance ; not as Paul and Barnabas 
angrily parted at Antioch, but as Abraham and 
Lot peacefully parted at Bethel ; not as John, 
who cried, " Forbid ! " but as Jesus, who replied, 
" Welcome !" not as cave-dwellers moping in 
solitude, but as cosmopolitans living in God's 
open air. O ye Christian sectarians ; ye who 
are dwelling in dark glens of denominationalism ; 
ye who, like Elijah in his cave, imagine that you 



THE UNIFICATION OF CHRISTENDOM ioi 

alone are Jehovah's true prophets ; ye who live 
in the hamlet of your sect, and 

Think the rustic cackle of your bourg 
The murmur of the world — 

come out from your dark little glen into the sun- 
light of God's open country, and see how vast is 
the dome of his sky. 

Catholicity the Ideal Church Form. But 
how shall this unity by comprehension be effected? 
And so I pass to present for a moment catho- 
licity as the ideal church form. For, as we have 
seen, each Christian sect, in so far as it has 
Christ's own spirit, does have its own divine mis- 
sion. Each Christian sect is a facet in God's 
great diamond of truth, flashing prismatic hues, 
the union of which makes the dazzling white 
light. It is not given to any one man or to any 
one set of men, however great, to comprehend 
all truth ; for if it were, men themselves would 
be infinite. Accordingly, while sectarianism is 
born of sin, and is devilish, sect is born of finite- 
ness and may be even angelic. Do not try, then, 
to secure unity by hammering diversities into 
monotonous flatness. But try to secure unity 
by soaring high enough to comprehend diversi- 



102 LIFE AND LIGHT 

ties, even as God's own sky comprehends ocean 
and forest, valley and mountain, man and flower. 
As a matter of fact, each denomination, in 
rearing its own ecclesiastical structure, does work 
selectively. Each sect, in building its own creed 
or polity, builds on the remembrance of certain 
Scriptures which it regards as favorable, and on 
the oblivion of certain other Scriptures which it 
regards as unfavorable ; equally skilled in the 
art of remembering and in the art of forgetting ; 
dexterously adjusting its powers of memory and 
its powers of oblivion to the supposed necessities 
of the case. In other words, each sect errs not 
so much in what it believes as in what it fails to 
believe. The coming ideal church will be built, 
not on a selection of Scriptures, but on the Bible 
in its wholeness. Can there be any better way 
of bringing about the unification of Christendom 
than by the occasional and considerate inter- 
change of different scriptural views by represent- 
ative Christian thinkers of all communions ? If 
the church is ever to be perfected into one, that 
perfection will be effected, not by resolutions 
of conventions or decrees of councils, but by 
the gradual permeation of Christian sentiments 
throughout Christendom. 



THE UNIFICATION OF CHRISTENDOM 103 

This matter, then, of the unification of Chris- 
tendom, is more than a mere sentiment or sweet 
privilege ; like humility or prayer or faith, it is 
not even a matter of option ; it is the most im- 
perial of the commandments. If you insist on 
the word " ordinance," love is the ordinance of 
the ordinances. Now abide Faith, Hope, Love, 
these three ; and the greatest of these is love. 
And no wonder ; for God himself is love, so that 
he who abides in love abides in God, and God 
abides in him. 



XII 

The Parliament of 
Religions 



I'm apt to think the man 
That could surround the sum of things, and spy 
The heart of God, and secrets of his empire, 
Would speak but love. With him the bright result 
Would change the hue of intermediate scenes, 
And make one thing of all theology. 



XII 




T the Columbian Exposition in 1893, 
there were one hundred and sixty con- 
gresses, lasting six months ; the crown- 
ing one was the Parliament of Religions, in which 
intellectuality and spirituality culminated. This 
stupendous idea of these various congresses was 
conceived by the Honorable Charles C. Bonney, 
a man of the rarest gifts and spirituality, who 
conducted them with great breadth, patience, and 
skill to a noble consummation. 

The Purpose of the Parliament. The pur- 
pose of the parliament was not to "array one 
form of religion against another form of religion ; 
but to array (if possible) all religions against all 
irreligion." 

Religion, as I understand the term, is largely 
subjective ; it is the heart-sense of adoration, 
thanksgiving, penitence, confession, prayer, sac- 
rifice, aspiration ; in one word, religion is wor- 
ship. As such, religion is common to mankind ; 

107 



108 LIFE AND LIGHT 

whatever the race, the age, the form. Religion 
is a mark of human nature, however degraded 
Accordingly, not only are Christians religious ; 
so also are Jews, Gentiles, Buddhists, Confucian- 
ists, Mohammedans, Fetishists, etc. The Apostle 
Paul himself states the matter very clearly when, 
in his address on the Areopagus, he says to his 
pagan listeners : " Ye men of Athens, in all 
things I perceive that ye are (what? "too super- 
stitious" ? No ;) very religious!' 

On the other hand the term religions, as I un- 
derstand the word, means objective human struc- 
tures ; what man himself has either discovered, 
invented, elaborated, selected, or whatever other 
term you may please to choose in that connec- 
tion. Religions are theologies. Accordingly, 
religions are more or less matters of topography, 
race, temperament, environment. Thus we speak 
of the religion of the Jew, the Greek, the Roman, 
the Romanist, the Protestant, etc. In brief, while 
religion is an essential mark of Man, religions 
are incidental marks of men. 

We often hear it said that Christianity is the 
only true religion, and therefore it is exclusive 
of all other religions. I venture to think that it 
is the other religions which are really exclusive ; 



THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS 109 

that it is the Christian religion which is really in- 
clusive ; and, therefore, that the Christian religion 
is the only true, adequate religion for mankind. 
This is one of the great truths which the Parlia- 
ment of Religions brought into clearer light. It 
showed that our Father is as impartial in religion 
as he is in nature ; making his moral sun to rise 
on the evil and on the good, and sending his 
moral rain on the just and the unjust. If any 
particular man continues darkened and parched, 
the fault is not in God's sun or rain ; the fault is 
in the man himself; for he persists in living in a 
cave. Meanwhile, God's own sky does encom- 
pass all the earth. Do not let the Southerner, 
who has never been North, deny that there is a 
Northern Aurora. Do not let the Northerner, 
who has never been South, deny that there is a 
Southern Cross. 

Personnel of the Parliament of Religions. 
We are always interested in conspicuous charac- 
ters. Let me allude to some of them in way of 
rough characterization. There was the broad 
and tactful John Henry Barrows, the chairman 
of the parliament. I will name the speakers 
(such as I have time to mention at all) in the al- 
phabetical order of their creeds. There were such 



no LIFE AND LIGHT 

Baptists, for example, as the eloquent Lorimer, 
the scholarly Wilkinson ; such a Brahman as the 
accomplished Narasima of Madras ; such Bud- 
dhists as the gentle Dharmapala, and the keen 
Hirai ; such a Confucianist as the grave Pung 
Quang Yu, secretary of the Chinese Legation at 
Washington, who received a most enthusiastic 
ovation, because he stood there as the represen- 
tative of outraged China ; such Congregation- 
alists as the radical Abbott, the orthodox Cook, 
the brilliant Moxom, the considerate Noble ; 
such educators as the vigorous Bruce of Scotland, 
the wise Fisher of Yale, the versatile Grant of 
Canada ; such Episcopalians as the evangelical 
Dudley of Kentucky, the aesthetic Haweis of 
London, the brilliant Momerie of Cambridge ; 
such Evangelists as the gallant Fielding, the 
stout Pentecost ; such Greeks as the picturesque 
Archimandrite of Damascus, the massive Latas 
of Zante, the princely Wolkonsky of Russia ; 
such Hindus as the devout Mozoomdar, such a 
Jain as the acute Ganthi ; such Jews as the elo- 
quent Gottheil, the broad Hirsch, the scholarly 
Wise ; such Methodists as the genial Arnett, the 
energetic Bristol, the militant Townsend ; such 
Missionaries — I love to call their honored names 



THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS ill 

— as the facile Candlin, the veteran Faber, the 
zealous Haworth, the judicious Hume, the ac- 
complished Jessup, the dignified McFarland, the 
venerable McGilvary, the learned Martin, the 
evangelistic Phillips, the scholarly Post, the en- 
thusiastic Reid, the diplomatic Washburn ; such 
Presbyterians as the steadfast Dennis, the courtly 
Niccolls, the illustrious Schaff (how well I re- 
member him as he stood on that platform, 
trembling from a recent assault of paralysis) ; 
such Reformers as Dike of Massachusetts, Glad- 
den of Ohio, Peabody of Harvard University ; 
such Romanists as the eminent Gibbons, the 
American Ireland, the catholic Keane (I do not 
say Roman Catholic — he is more than that ; he 
is a catholic) ; such Scholars as the conservative 
Sir William Dawson, the progressive Henry 
Drummond, the erudite Max Muller ; such a 
Shintoist as the gracious Shibata ; such Unita- 
rians as the philosophic Alger, the versatile Hale, 
the enthusiastic Jones ; such Women (and they 
were a blessed force in the Parliament) as Laura 
Ormiston Chant, Augusta J. Chapin, Lydia H. 
Dickinson, Annis F. Eastman, Alice C. Fletcher, 
Ellen M. Henrotin, Julia Ward Howe, Ida C. 
Hultin, Elizabeth R. Sunderland, and that ex- 



112 LIFE AND LIGHT 

quisite specimen of redeemed Parsee womanhood, 
Jeanne Serabji. They were among the elect 
spirits of mankind. 

Results of the Parliament. First, The Par- 
liament raised our spiritual zenith by heightening 
our conceptions of God. It has intensified the 
conviction that our God is no geographical deity, 
like the local gods of Egypt, the tribal gods of 
Greece, the pantheon gods of Rome, the national 
god of Palestine, the ecclesiastical God of Chris- 
tendom. It has shewn that our God's name is 
Elohim as well as Jehovah. It has taught us 
again the lesson which St. Peter was so slow to 
learn when, in the presence of the devout heathen, 
Cornelius, he was divinely forced to admit : 

" Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter 
of persons ; but in every nation he that feareth 
him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable 
to him." 

Again, as the Parliament of Religions raised 
our spiritual zenith by heightening our concep- 
tions of God ; so the Parliament of Religions 
broadened our spiritual horizon by enlarging our 
conceptions of man. For it showed that mankind 
is at bottom religious. Man is still made in the 
image of God. True, that image is fearfully 



THE PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS 113 

defaced ; but it has not been totally effaced. 
Deep down the grades of our fallen humanity, 
in the very lowest and guiltiest of our race, a 
generous vision shall discern, beneath wreck 
and rubbish, some dim sense of right ; some 
faint idea of duty ; some incipient, nebulous 
yearning after better things. And these and 
such as these are fragments, tiny and blurred, 
indeed, nevertheless real fragments of the Divine 
image. And these and such as these are the 
prophets of hope ; the human basis for the pos- 
sibility of human redemption and perfectation. 
These and such as these are the real basis of 
the human brotherhood. 

Every morning there was a moment of supreme 
sublimity in connection with the devotional serv- 
ice. Some one, whom the chairman selected, led 
the multitude of worshipers in repeating rever- 
ently with bowed heads the Lord's Prayer. Thus, 
representatives of mankind, and of various faiths, 
bent in unison before the one Almighty Father 
on the basis of his Son's universal prayer. Pagan 
joined with Christian in exalting the name of 
Him who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. 



XIII 

The Disarmament of 
Nations' 



1 This proposal of disarmament was originally given in a public 
address delivered in Washington City, on March 4, 1890, eight years 
before the czar proposed his international conference for considering 
the policy of reducing armaments, in the presence of a large audience, 
including the then Secretary of State, several members of the Cabinet, 
many members of Congress, many foreign ambassadors, etc., Mr. Jus- 
tice Harlan, of the Supreme Court of the United States, presiding. It 
was substantially repeated before the Peace Congress at the World's 
Fair in Chicago, August 18, 1893, and the Peace Congress in London. 
The original pamphlet has long been out of print. 



WAR 

From hill to hill he harried me, 

He stalked me day and night ; 
He neither knew nor hated me, 

Not his, nor mine, the fight. 

He killed the man who stood by me, 

For such they made his law ; 
Then foot by foot I fought to him 

Who neither knew nor saw. 

I trained my rifle on his head, 

He leapt up in the air, 
My screaming ball tore thro' his breast 

And lay imbedded there. 

It lay imbedded there, and yet 

Hissed home o'er hill and sea, 
Straight to the aching heart of her 

Who ne'er did harm to me. 

—From " Ainslee's Magazine.' 



I 




XIII 

|OCIETY is more than a human organi- 
zation ; it is a divine organism, into 
which, ideally speaking, every human 
being is born, from which no human being can 
escape, the nature of which no human being can 
change, to the essential terms of which every 
human being is morally bound to conform. In 
other words, Society is not an outward law ; So- 
ciety is an inward life. St. Paul's classic analogon 
of the human body, may well be applied to that 
auguster organism we call Mankind. For Chris- 
tianized Mankind is the culminating sample, the 
realized ideal of St. Paul's " body," for it is only 
when we conceive mankind as one colossal ideal 
body, having all its organs in co-ordination and 
all its functions in reciprocal action that we can 
truly grasp this mighty word Mankind. It is a 
sublime conception, which shall yet by God's 
grace dominate humanity. 

This analogon of the human body is not an 

117 



u8 LIFE AND LIGHT 

anatomical homologue, to be taken structurally, 
but it is an ideal analogue, to be taken func- 
tionally. Accordingly, his language is not to be 
taken literally or sound-wise, but ideally or hint- 
wise. In other words, his analogon is ideally 
true ; and ideas are often the truest of truths. 
Let not our familiarity with this analogy deaden 
our sense of its varied and profound significance. 

An Outline Statement. What our apostle's 
analogon suggests is in main outline this : The re- 
lation between men and men as being fellow-mem- 
bers of the one great body of mankind is a func- 
tional relation as real, vital, reciprocal, organic, as 
the relation between the fellow-members of the 
human body. That is to say : — as the human body 
is a single organism, consisting of many different 
organs and functions, balanced in common coun- 
terpoise, and working in mutual interaction ; so 
mankind is a single moral organism, consisting 
in like manner of many diversities, balanced in 
similar counterpoise and working in similar inter- 
action. It is Christianity's positive, majestic 
contribution to Sociology, or the Philosophy of 
Society. 

The Body the Truest Analogon of Man- 
kind. Thus the human body is a profound and 



THE DISARMAMENT OF NATIONS 119 

telling symbol, or rather suggestive functional 
analogue of that majestic ideal organism which 
we call the Social Body or Corporate Mankind. 
How significantly we hint all this when we use 
such familiar expressions as " Body Politic," 
u Corps Legislatif" " ecclesiastical body," "taking 
the sense of the body," "esprit de corps" etc. We 
shall never rise to a higher or truer conception 
of human society or mankind than under this 
biologic analogue of the bodily organism. We 
outlive human theories ; we shall never outlive 
divine biology. And now let us attend to some 
applications of this biological analogon to inter- 
national life. 

"Body" Implies Diverse "Members." On 
the one hand the term "body" itself implies 
"members"; and "members" imply diversity, 
and diversity implies specific functions. Accord- 
ingly, in the one great body of mankind, the 
individuality of the component nations is pre- 
served. For each nation — oh, that all the nations 
understood it ! — is charged with its own divine 
mission. Surveyed in this light, each nation, at 
least while we are surveying it, is as it were a 
single person. Recall how Jehovah — the Cove- 
nant-God of the Hebrew people — in proclaiming 



120 LIFE AND LIGHT 

his Ten Commandments, addressed the millions 
of Israel as a single personality or one corporate 
unity, saying : 

"I am Jehovah, thy God, who brought thee 
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house 
of bondage " (Exod. 20 : 2), and continuing 
to use the singular pronoun, "thou," "thee," 
"thy," throughout the whole Decalogue. The 
Jews, surveyed as individuals, were many Israel- 
ites ; the Jews, surveyed as a nation of individ- 
uals, were one Israel. In like manner, every 
other nation worthy of the name of nation is 
also a person, having at least some of the 
attributes of personality ; that is, each nation 
has its own peculiarities or natural idiosyn- 
crasies. Recall, for example, Hebrew devout- 
ness ; Babylonian constructiveness ; Egyptian 
seriousness ; Greek culture ; Roman jurispru- 
dence ; Indian (Asiatic) mysticism ; Gothic im- 
petuosity ; Scandinavian valor ; Chinese conser- 
vatism ; Japanese flexibility ; African docility ; 
Indian (American) nomadism ; Spanish pride ; 
Italian estheticism ; Roman persistence ; Swiss 
federalism; French savoirfaii-e; German philos- 
ophism ; English indomitableness ; Scotch shrewd- 
ness ; Irish humor ; Welsh eloquence ; Canadian 



THE DISARMAMENT OF NATIONS 121 

thrift ; American versatility, etc. Each nation 
has its own Role definitely assigned it in the 
great drama of mankind. What an insight into 
the philosophy of history is given us by the 
great missionary Paul when, addressing the proud 
autochthones of the Areopagus, he announced : 

' 'God made of one every nation of men to 
dwell on all the face of the earth, having fixed 
appointed periods and the bounds of their habi- 
tation " (Acts 17 : 26). 

Diverse " Members" Imply a " Common Body." 
While it is true that each nation has its own 
individual mission, it is also true that all the 
nations constitute one common Nation, namely, 
the one august body of Mankind, the one sub- 
lime corporation of humankind, whereof each 
nation is, so to speak, a component member, and 
each individual a specific organ, having its own 
definite function to discharge in the one organism 
of Mankind. In other words, each nation, in 
simple virtue of its own existence as a nation is 
also strictly international, being a corporate 
member of the one divinely incorporated Society 
of Mankind ; so that its relation to its fellow- 
nations is a relation, not of hostile competition, 
but of integrant co-operation. In still other 



122 LIFE AND LIGHT 

words, the relation of nationalism to internation- 
alism is the relation of the members and functions 
to the body. 

War is National Self-maiming. And now- 
let me apply this sublime idea of international 
life or corporate mankind to that frequent and 
sad violation of it, namely, war. For, from what I 
have said concerning the bodily organism as the 
divine ideal of the one organic, corporate man- 
kind, it follows that all war is not only interna- 
tional wounding, but also national self-maiming. 
Indeed, it is just because we persist in conceiving 
society as a mechanical organization, like Hobbe's 
"Leviathan/' rather than as a natural organism, 
like the human body, that we also persist in re- 
sorting to mechanical methods like war rather 
than to natural methods like peace for settling 
human quarrels. In fact, war is the culminating 
sample of what St. Paul calls "a schism in the 
body"; that is, a rending asunder of human 
society, a dismemberment of mankind. 

The whole New Testament, not only in its 
trend but also in its details, is distinctly and em- 
phatically against all war. Study it from Mat- 
thew to Revelation ; I do not think you can cite 
from it a solitary statement that even hints that 



THE DISARMAMENT OF NATIONS 123 

Jesus Christ or his apostles ever approved of 
physical war. No, the Son of Man came not to 
destroy men's lives but to save them. The only 
way in which you can defend war from the Bible 
is by quoting from an expurgated edition — strik- 
ing out the whole New Testament or ministra- 
tion of life, leaving only the Old Testament or 
ministration of death. Thank God, the New 
Covenant is gaining on the old ; Moses is giving 
way to Jesus. Even within the comparatively 
short time since our own desolating civil strife 
ceased, the conceptions of men concerning man- 
kind have wonderfully cleared and broadened ; 
the great problem of Sociology itself has come 
conspicuously to the very front of human think- 
ing. In fact, this great problem is no longer a 
local problem concerning societies or men ; it is 
henceforth a universal problem concerning So- 
ciety or Man. Thinkers begin to see that war of 
whatever kind, foreign as well as civic, is suicidal 
as well as murderous. It is as though the mem- 
bers should again revolt against the belly, or the 
foot should kick against the nose, or the right 
hand amputate the left. In fact, it is war which is 
the real stupidity ; it is peace which is the real 
sagacity. The time is fast passing by when 



124 LIFE AND LIGHT 

thoughtful men will any longer cherish the senti- 
mental tradition and barbarous fancy that a ques- 
tion of national honor or international right can 
really be settled by an appeal to gunnery, how- 
ever elaborate. If we were materialists, and really 
believed that the national honor is a matter of 
molecular bulk — say a hundred cubic feet, or of 
molecular weight — say a hundred tons, then we 
might with some consistency undertake to de- 
fend the national honor by a molecular appeal 
to bayonets and bombs. In fact, molecular force 
is the brute's standard of ethics. But if we be- 
lieve that honor and right and truth are in their 
nature spiritual, not molecular, let us be con- 
sistent and maintain them by spiritual weapons, 
not by molecular. 

Divine Summons to American Disarmament. 
Here, then, I take my stand as a Christian Soci- 
ologist. Solemnly believing that the policy of 
my Divine Master is a policy of peace, I as sol- 
emnly believe that my Divine Master is summon- 
ing earth's nations to a policy of disarmament. 
How they shall effect this disarmament, whether 
suddenly or gradually, whether separately or 
simultaneously, I do not presume to assert. 
But I do presume to assert, unhesitatingly and 



THE DISARMAMENT OF NATIONS 125 

unqualifiedly, that the time has come when the 
nations should commit themselves openly to the 
policy of disarmament. 

America's Great Opportunity. Meanwhile, 
if I had the ear of my beloved country, I would 
venture to offer so much as this : Let our Amer- 
ican nation propose to our brother nations to 
disarm ; substituting arbitration, or some other 
pacific policy, for armament. All of us, whether 
Republicans or Democrats, whether natives or 
immigrants, will agree that if there is on earth a 
nation that can afford to disarm and be known as 
the great peace people, it is the American nation, 
for our fortunes do not vibrate in the oscillating 
balance of European powers. We are strong 
enough, and ought to be brave enough, to say to 
our brother nations of mankind : 

We believe that war is a foolish, antiquated, 
wicked policy. Let us disarm, referring our dis- 
putes not to the bloody decisions of capricious 
war, but to the peaceful arbitrament of Christian 
common-sense. Let us enter into a covenant of 
everlasting amity ; organizing a peace league 
that shall be not only Pan-American, but also 
Pan-human. We Americans take the initiative 
in inviting all the nations of the earth to meet 
with us in that greatest of congresses, " The 
Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World." 



126 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Summary. Here I rest my argument. I 
might, of course, have descanted on the waste- 
fulness of war — its frightful waste of money, of 
time, of strength, of health, of capacity, of love, 
of joy, of morals — in one great word — of life. 
Never producing, forever consuming, war is the 
very genius of that monstrous, pitiless, ghastly 
fugitive from the infernal abyss, whose name in 
the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon ; in the Greek, 
Apollyon ; in the English, Destroyer. England's 
Iron Duke, " foremost captain of his time," never 
said a truer or sadder thing than in his dispatch 
from the red field of Waterloo : " Nothing ex- 
cept a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a 
battle won." Our own brilliant Sherman ex- 
claimed, " War is hell ! " But while such consid- 
erations as these might perhaps have been more 
thrilling, I have chosen to take higher ground, 
appealing to a loftier principle. That loftier 
principle is this : The divine conception of all 
mankind as constituting one vast, many-mem- 
bered moral body, one colossal corporate organ- 
ism. In this majestic conception lies the secret 
of the reconciliation of the great schism or dis- 
memberment in the one body of Mankind. The 
cure of war lies not in the suspicion and enmity 



THE DISARMAMENT OF NATIONS 127 

and rivalry that are entrenched in armaments; 
the cure of war lies in the confidence and brother- 
hood and co-operation that are announced in 
disarmament. For in what proportion Mankind 
feels itself to be what its Maker and Lord meant 
it should be, namely, one organic person rather 
than a congeries of organized structures — in that 
proportion race strifes will cease, nation saying 
to nation, "We are members one of another." 



XIV 

St. Paul's Cloak 



1 Unfinished study. 



The cloak which I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, 
bring, and the books, especially the parchments. 

— 2 Timothy 4 : 13. 



. . . lade Onesimus 

. . . deep with love from me. 
Christ will not fail him, if he fail not Christ ; 

"It is but for a moment, all the pain," 

Charge it upon Onesimus to-day, 
" But for eternal ages is the joy ! " 

I am to die . . . 
But the majestic kingdom of my God 
Will stand forever and forever good. 

— The Epic of Paul. 




XIV 

ATHOS of Parting Requests. Amid 
the dreary damps of his Roman dun- 
geon, with the most uncomplaining 
simplicity, St. Paul writes to Timothy to bring 
him his earthly possessions. 

The Cloak. Was it a Roman penula? A 
traveling mantle ? In all events, an old, well- 
worn garment, keeping its own tale of sea and 
storm ; of loving words and cruel taunts ; of 
scourgings and blood. A warm mantle needed 
in that Mamertine prison ; as Latimer in the 
Tower of London, an old man ill-clad and fire- 
less, cried out, "You look that I should burn, 
but unless you let me have some fire I am like 
to deceive your expectations, for I am like to 
starve from cold." It is one of the curiosities of 
ecclesiastical literature that some have regarded 
this cloak as a " chasuble." 

That I Left. He may have been too sud- 
denly arrested to take his own possessions. 

131 



132 LIFE AND LIGHT 

At Troas. What memories attach to Homer's 
"Tale of Troy Divine" ! The glory of Greece, 
the magic of heroes ! It was in this city that St. 
Paul beheld by night, on the opposite side of the 
iEgean Sea, the phantom which beckoned him 
to come "over and help" Macedonia. Was it 
in rehearsing this vision that the enthusiastic 
apostle spoke so long that Eutychus was overcome 
with sleep and fell from the window ? 

With Carpus. His name only is mentioned 
here ; yet because it is mentioned here, it is more 
illustrious than that of royal Priam, heroic Hec- 
tor, naval Agamemnon — whose ships assailed 
the Dardanelles — fierce Achilles, mighty Ajax, 
brave Diomedes. Happy every custodian who, 
like Carpus, is faithful in the charge of even 
an old cloak. 

Bring When Thou Comest. Then Paul was 
expecting Timothy, or had sent for him, hope 
which brightened the gloom of his dungeon. 

The Books. The biblia, the little papyrus 
scrolls. How many of us think, when we see 
the Bible, that it was written on small scrips of 
papyrus ? What were these biblia ? Were they 
copies of Homer's " Iliad " ? Herodotus' histo- 
ries ? ^Eschylus' tragedies ? Plato's dialogues ? 



ST. PAUVS CLOAK 133 

Aristotle's ethics? Orations of Demosthenes? 
Commentaries of Julius Caesar ? Speeches of 
Cicero ? " ^Sneid " of Virgil ? 

Or were these biblia copies of the Old Tes- 
tament Scriptures ? The Pentateuch ? The 
Chronicles ? The Psalms ? The Prophets ? Or 
were they his private copies in which he had 
written his own marginal notes? Did he dream 
that when he was writing this request to Timothy, 
he was writing a part of the Bible ? 

Especially the Parchments. Membranes, 
sheepskins, vellum. Some of the rarest treasures 
of the great libraries of the world are membranes 
or parchments ; for instance, the Codex Sinaiti- 
cus, kept under glass in St. Petersburg. To this 
day the diplomas of our universities are inscribed 
on sheepskins. 

What were these membranes, parchments ? 
Were they his own private memoranda ? Out- 
lines of letters to churches? Correspondence 
with Peter, James, John, Apollos, Philemon ? 
Love letters ? Caesar's sign-manual accrediting 
his Roman citizenship ? Life is in the spirit. 
The essential things are few. The biblia and 
the parchments were essential to him, because 
they held the great verities by which his life was 



134 LIFE AND LIGHT 

dominated ; the body needed only warmth to 
hold the spirit for the headsman's axe which 
set it free. 

Listen to the martyr Tyndal as he writes from 
his prison in the castle of Vilvorde, to the gov- 
ernor in the winter of 1535 : 

" I entreat your Lordship, and that by the Lord 
Jesus, that if I am to remain here during the 
winter, you will request the Procureur to be kind 
enough to send me from my goods which he has 
in possession a warmer cap, for I suffer extremely 
from cold ; a warmer coat also, for that which I 
have is very thin ; also a piece of cloth to patch 
my leggings, my shirts also are worn out ; I 
wish also his permission to have a candle in the 
evening, for it is wearisome to sit alone in the 
dark. But above all, I entreat and beseech 
Your Clemency to be urgent with the Procureur 
that he may kindly permit me to have my 
Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Grammar, and Hebrew 
Dictionary, that I may spend my time with the 
study'' (Demaus* "Biography of William Tyn- 
dal," pp. 476, 477, etc.). 

The Nearness of St. Paul. What though 
he could work miracles ? He yet suffered like 
ourselves with cold ; he sent for an old cloak. 



ST. PAUDS CLOAK 135 

What though he was inspired ? He felt that he 
must have his books and parchments, like any 
other scholar. What though he was the hero 
" who had fought the good fight " ? He yet calls 
for little things. What though he was on the 
confines between two worlds ? He grasps with the 
one hand " the crown of righteousness," and with 
the other the old cloak " which he left at Troas." 

The Blessedness of Youthful Ministries 
to Saintly Veterans. Happy the young Timo- 
thies who may bring to the aged Pauls cloaks, 
books, and manuscripts. Happy those who 
bring to the aged Annas flowers, smiles, fruits, 
jellies. "'Tis a little thing to give a cup of 
water, yet its draught of cool refreshment, 
drained by fevered lips, may give a shock of 
pleasure to the frame more exquisite than when 
nectarean juice renews the life of joy in happiest 
hours. It is a little thing to speak a phrase of 
common comfort, which by daily use has almost 
lost its sense ; yet on the ear of him who thought 
to die unmourned, 'twill fall like choicest music " 
(Talford's "Ion," i : 2). 

May each one of us receive Christ's cloak of 
righteousness ; Christ's book of truth ; Christ's 
parchments of heavenly citizenship, 

K 



136 LIFE AND LIGHT 

" O Almighty God, who alone canst order the 
unruly wills and affections of sinful men ; grant 
unto thy people, that they may love the thing 
which thou commandest and desire that which 
thou dost promise ; that so, among the sundry 
and manifold changes of the world, our hearts 
may surely there be fixed where true joys are to 
be found, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 



XV 

Life Music 1 



1 Elements of an extemporaneous address delivered at a musical 
festival, Judson Memorial, New York City. 



Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the 

chords with might ; 

Smote the chord of Self, that trembling, pass'd in music 

out of sight. 

— Tennyson. 




XV 

AN himself (the inner, true man) the 
true music. 
True for each individual. 
Solo of Heart ; 
Duet of Lips ; 

Trio of Spirit and Soul and Body ; 
Quartette of Hands and Feet ; 
Basso of Righteousness ; 
Contralto of Hope ; 
Tenor of Faith ; 
Soprano of Love ; 
Gamut of the Beatitudes ; 
Concert of all his Faculties ; 
Harmony of his Profession and Character ; 
Orchestra of his Bodily Powers ; 
Tonic of Christ. 

True for the Church. 
Choir of each Church ; 

Chorus of Christendom ; 

139 



140 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Symphony of the Kingdom ; 
Hymn of Aspiration ; 
Chant of Worship ; 
Anthem of Adoration ; 
Oratorio of Life ; 
Organ of the Divine Breath ; 
Bell of Invitation ; 
Cymbal of Praise ; 
Harp of Devotion ; 
Trumpet of Jubilee ; 
Overture of Human Time • 
Heaven the Phone ; 
Earth the Antiphone ; 
Hallelujah-chorus of heaven. 



XVI 

The Name Christian 1 



i « why art thou called a Christian ? " asks the thirty-second question 
in the Heidelberg Catechism. "Because I am a member of Christ by 
Faith, and thus a partaker of His anointing ; that so I may confess His 
name, and present myself a living sacrifice of thanksgiving to Him." 



The best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer; 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ; 
The first true gentle-man that ever breathed. 

— Thomas Decker. 




XVI 

NTIOCH was a heathen city ; it was in 
Antioch some ten years after the As- 
cension, that the Disciples were first 
called " Christians" or followers of One "Christ." 
Although this word " Christian" has become one 
of our most sacredly familiar words, yet it may 
be surprising to learn that it occurs but three 
times in the New Testament. Let us glance at 
these successive instances ; for they mark a 
progress in the order of their occurrence — an 
order as logical as chronological. 

And, first, the word " Christian " as an 
epithet. Who gave the followers of Jesus this 
name ? The followers of Jesus themselves ? 
Hardly ; they were wont to speak of themselves 
as " Believers, Brethren, Disciples, Elect, Faith- 
ful, Followers, Holy, Saints, Those of the way," 
etc. The Jews ? Hardly ; for the word " Chris- 
tian " comes from the word " Christ " ; and to the 

Jew the Greek word " Christ" meant "anointed," 

143 



144 LIFE AND LIGHT 

and was equivalent to the Hebrew word "Mes- 
siah " ; accordingly, for Jews to call the followers 
of Jesus " Christians " was to admit virtually that 
they were followers of the Messiah. The Jewish 
epithet for this new sect was " Galileans, Naza- 
renes, Heretics." The heathen of Antioch? 
Probably ; they knew little, and cared less, about 
this Jewish foreigner called "Jesus"; but they 
noticed that his followers were forever using the 
word "Christ" in their talk, and so they called 
these followers " Christians." 

Secondly, the word " Christian " as a Pros- 
elyte. 

" Agrippa said to Paul, Almost thou persuad- 
est me to be a Christian ; With but little persua- 
sion thou wouldest fain make me a Christian ; 
Thou somewhat persuadest me to make me a 
Christian " (Acts 26 : 28). 

Recall the thrilling scene : Agrippa's visit to 
Festus ; the arraignment of the famous Jewish yet 
cosmopolitan prisoner ; Paul's masterly defense ; 
his sudden appeal to Agrippa, a man expert in 
all the Jewish customs and questions : " King 
Agrippa, believest thou the prophets ? I know 
that thou believest " ; Agrippa's attempt to parry, 
resorting to a semi-jest, " Oh, you fancy that with 



THE NAME CHRISTIAN 145 

but little persuasion you can win me over to your 
new sect ? " How magnanimous the illustrious 
prisoner's reply : 

" I could pray God, that both in some degree 
and in a great degree, whether with little effort 
or with great, not only thou, but also all that 
hear me this day, may become such as I am, 
except these bonds " (Acts 26 : 29). 

Thirdly, the word " Christian " as a Char- 
acter. 

" If a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be 
ashamed " (1 Peter 4:16). 

How impressive the context. 

" Be not astonished at the fiery test taking 
place among you to prove you, as though a 
strange thing were befalling you ; but, in so far 
as ye share in Christ's sufferings, rejoice ; that, 
at the revelation of His glory, also, ye may 
rejoice with exceeding joy. If ye are reproached 
in Christ's name, happy are ye ; because the 
Spirit of glory and that of God rests on you. 
For let no one of you suffer as a murderer, or a 
thief, or an evil-doer, or as a busy-body in other 
men's matters ; but if as a Christian, let him not 
be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this 
name" (1 Peter 4 : 12-16). 



146 LIFE AND LIGHT 

According to Peter the Rock, to be a Christian 
is to follow Christ himself ; to walk in Christ's 
footsteps ; to share in his character ; to experience 
his beatitudes ; in brief, to have Christ within, 
and so put on Christ. It is a beautiful fulfilment 
of the ancient prophet's saying : 

" One shall say, I am Jehovah's ; and another 
shall call himself by the name of Jacob ; and 
another shall subscribe with his hand unto Jeho- 
vah, and surname himself by the name of Israel " 
(Isa. 44 : 5). 

11 Christian " the greatest of names. Thus 
the name " Christian," notwithstanding its 
heathen and perhaps opprobrious origin, has 
become the greatest of names. The term sums 
up all that is greatest in character, history, gov- 
ernment, literature, oratory, poetry, art, philoso- 
phy, heroism, wisdom. It was great to be able 
to say " Romanics sum." It is greater to be able 
to say, " Christianus sum." How majestic the 
moral growth involved in such words as these : 
"Jesus," "The Christ," "Christ," "Christian," 
"Christendom," "Christianity." Let us thank 
God then for Antioch ; for in that pagan city the 
word "Jew" was lost in the word "Christian." 
How this great word " Christian " dwarfs such 



THE NAME CHRISTIAN 147 

personal titles as " Athanasian, Augustinian, 
Arminian, Lutheran, Zwinglian, Calvinist, Wes- 
leyan, Swedenborgian, Campbellite," etc. How 
it dwarfs such denominational titles as " Baptist, 
Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, Congre- 
gationalism Quaker, Catholic, Protestant/' etc. 
Yet the title " Christian " does underlie them all. 
The two cosmopolitan names are " Man " and 
" Christian." 

The practical problem of the church is to make 
these two names inter-changeable. 



XVII 

The Olympic Games 

" Chairete Nikomen ! " 



1 A lecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Stenographic. 



On the Marathon day, 
When Persia was dust, all cried : "To Akropolis 1 
Run, Pheidippides, one race more ; the meed is thy due. 
Athens is saved, go shout ! " He flung down his shield. 
Run like fire once more. 



Till in he broke : " Rejoice 
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died — the bliss. 
Athens is saved ! " Pheidippides dies in the shout, for his meed. 

— Robert Browning. 



XVII 




O the superb conception of " Interna- 
tional Athletics as a Factor in Secur- 
ing Universal Peace," by the brilliant 
French Baron de Coubertin, the world owes the 
revival of the Olympic Games. " We shall not 
have peace," wrote the baron, "until the preju- 
dices which now separate the different races shall 
have been outlived. To attain this end, what 
better means than to bring the youth of all 
countries periodically together? The Olympic 
Games, with the ancients, controlled athletics 
and promoted peace. It is not visionary to look 
to them for similar benefactions in the future." 

The Athenian generosity of Monsieur Georges 
Averoff erected a marble Stadion, holding forty 
thousand spectators — a restoration of the time 
of Herodes Atticus. Once more Athens had the 
excitement of watching a splendid building rear 
its marble walls on the historic Panathenaic 

site. In every province of Hellas and among 

l 151 



152 LIFE AND LIGHT 

the Athletic Associations of Germany, France, 
England, Australia, Sweden, America, applica- 
tions were made for a place in the lists. 

The ancient games were only for one country, 
Hellas ; "barbarians " were excluded ; the mod- 
ern games included all nationalities, in racial 
equality, as contestants for the olive boughs of 
Olympia. 

Easter Monday, April 6, 1896, was fixed for 
the opening of the games, the seventy-fifth Anni- 
versary of Greek Independence. 

The solemn ceremonies of the impressive 
Greek Easter had preceded, as was most fit- 
ting ; for the ancient Games of Olympia were 
above all things else supremely sacred contests, 
into which only the pure in heart and aim might 
enter in devotion to the great god Zeus. On 
that glorious Easter Monday beautiful Athens 
was even more beautiful than in the days of old, 
when her poet exclaimed, 

O thou ! our Athens ! violet-wreathed, brilliant, most 
enviable city ! 

The skies were as blue as when Pallas Athena 
stretched her spear over the sea, and ^Eschylus 
recited in the theatre of Dionysus. The bees 



THE OLYMPIC GAMES 153 

were humming on the honeyed slopes of Hym- 
mettos ; the plane tree of Plato was shining with 
fresh young leaves ; and the snowdrops were 
blooming on the bank by the Ilissos, where 
the two great philosophers reclined to talk of 
immortality ; small yellow-stars covered the hill 
of Sophocles at Colonos, and down at old Pha- 
lerum, by the asphodel meadows, the blue sea 
sang the same song it sang to Ulysses. 

The city was gay with decorations, wreaths, 
garlands, pennons ; the houses were draped in 
blue and white bunting ; the flags of many 
nations, banners of the " barbarians, " waved 
over the old letters " O A." 

Heralds of this new age of International Peace, 
the representatives of many nations in pictur- 
esque and varied costumes moved through the 
bright streets to the great Stadion of M. AverorT. 
The sixty tiers of seats were entirely filled, 
and on the hills around a great concourse was 
gathered in eager expectation. 

Fifteen hundred and two years after the Em- 
peror Theodosius had abolished the Olympic 
Games, " thinking he was furthering human 
progress," a Christian King of Greece was about 
to re-open them with loftier purpose and world- 



154 LIp E AND LIGHT 

wide outlook. Who that saw that memorable 
scene in the great hemicycle can ever forget its 
mighty thrill ? The vast throng, the hush of 
awe as all arose ; the solemn entrance of the 
King and the Queen ; the stately proclamation 
of the opening of the games ; the Olympic ode 
sung by one hundred and fifty voices ! In that 
moment of intense excitement no one was wholly 
Athenian, or wholly French, or wholly American, 
but the dream of Socrates was realized — each one 
was a citizen of the world. And the thought of 
a greater than Socrates seemed also realized, 
when addressing the proud autochthones of the 
Areopagus, but a short distance away from the 
Stadion, he announced : " God made of one 
blood (nature) every nation of men to dwell on 
all the face of the earth" (Acts 17 : 26). 

The games lasted ten days, and it cost but a 
drachma to enter. Each day was intensely inter- 
esting, not because the games as athletics were 
especially marked by skill or prowess — I need 
not have left Philadelphia for that — but because 
of the historical associations going back nearly 
three thousand years. 

It was gratifying to my pride, of course, that 
a decisive majority of the games were won by 



THE OLYMPIC GAMES 155 

Americans, chiefly from the Boston Athletic 
Association and Princeton University. I sin- 
cerely hope, as a trustee of the University of 
Pennsylvania, we may be nobly represented in 
the next Olympiad. There were all sorts of 
games, except equestrian. There were wrest- 
ling, boxing, foot races, leaping, throwing the 
discus, which has been from the beginning pecu- 
liarly a Greek game. The victor in the discus 
throwing was Mr. Robert Garrett, of Princeton 
University. One game, however, seemed to be- 
long by right to the Greeks — the race to Mara- 
thon, called Marathon Day. You will remem- 
ber that the battle of Marathon, fought 490 b. c, 
was one of the decisive battles of the world, 
when Miltiades, by his superior tactics, won the 
ever-memorable victory over the army of Xerxes, 
the Persian sovereign. 

" Hallowed by his prowess lies the field of 
Marathon," said the lyric poet Simonides. 
"Cold, indeed, and little to be envied, is that 
man," said Lord Macaulay, "whose patriotism 
does not gain force on the plain of Marathon." 

When the battle was won, and " Persia 
was dust," eleven thousand Greeks having 
vanquished one hundred thousand Persians, 



156 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Pheidippides, the fleetest runner of Greece, who 
had previously run to Sparta for aid — according 
to Dr. William Smith, covering the distance of 
one hundred and fifty miles in forty-eight hours — 
was now chosen to carry this glorious news to 
Athens. Robert Browning, thrilling with Greek 
pride, has told us how he "ran like fire," falling 
dead at the gate of Athens as he cried : 

Chairete Nikomen ! Rejoice / we conquer / 

Spyridion Loues, an humble peasant living ob- 
scurely a few miles from Athens, in the village of 
Marousi, applied to enter the race, and the com- 
mittee refused on the ground that many of the 
contestants had been practising a year, and he 
had never run at all. He pleaded so earnestly 
for the honor of Hellas to be admitted, that at 
length his pertinacity triumphed, and Prince Con- 
stantine added his name. For three days pre- 
ceding the race he fasted and prayed, asking for 
the honor of Greece that he might win, perchance 
with some faith in the aid of the great Saint Spyri- 
dion of Corfu, whose name he bore. On the morn- 
ing of Marathon Day, he set out from his farm, 
with his mother's Spartan blessing : " My son, 
return to me victor, or dead." 



THE OLYMPIC GAMES 157 

At least seventy thousand spectators— some say 
one hundred thousand — were present in the Sta- 
dion and on the surrounding hills. As the time 
drew near for the arrival of the winner of glory for 
Greece, every eye was intensely strained toward 
the entry gate to see which of the eighteen run- 
ners should come in first. The suspense grew 
so keen and painful that the mighty throng even 
ceased to whisper. Suddenly there was a boom 
of cannon, token of some arrival along the 
Cephissia road ; a moment of the most intense 
expectation, holding of breath, then the soldiers 
on the outside of the arena parted right and left, 
and the white chiton of a Greek appeared. 
Shouts rent the air. 

Ellene! Ellene? 
Ellene / Nikomen / 
Chairete Nikomen / 

The vast throng rose, screamed, waved, 
stamped, jumped ; the Crown Prince seized the 
victor in his arms and lifted him on high ; the 
King tore his cap as he flung it into the air in 
triumph; cannon boomed, music burst, the Greeks 
wept with joy ; flights of doves bearing little 
Greek flags were sent over the city and through 



158 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Attica ; the tumult of excitement passed beyond 
all bounds of description and Loues was suffo- 
cated in eager embraces and loaded with gifts. 
The race of twenty-five miles over the stony road, 
jagainst practised runners had been won in two 
hours, fifty-eight minutes and fifty seconds. 
Avoiding the crowds as soon as he could Loues 
modestly hastened away to the small farm at 
Marousi, where the Spartan mother came forth 
to meet him : " My son, thy meal is ready, I have 
expected thee." 

Loues subsequently refused the large sums of 
money offered him, and gave the precious vase 
and silver cup to the Museum at Athens. He 
said with simplicity : " I have run for the honor 
of Greece, that is enough." 

Thus the sacred element which made the 
ancient games so profoundly religious was per- 
petuated in the new Olympiad by the persistent 
faith of the son of the soil. 

How often during these days while gazing on 
that arena and the " great cloud of witnesses " 
did my mind revert to St. Paul's words : "I strain 
every energy to win my race." Again, on the 
closing day, when the procession of the victors 
came to receive each man his olive bough from 



THE OLYMPIC GAMES 159 

the sacred grove at Olympia : "I have finished 
my race ; henceforth there is laid up for me the 
garland." 

The Apostle Paul was fond of imagery sug- 
gested by the ancient stadion ; himself a Christian 
athlete, he could find no sturdier metaphors than 
those suggested by the religious athletics of the 
Greeks, whose language he spoke and wrote. 
For instance : Does he wish to incite the Cor- 
inthian Christians to a sturdier religious life? 
He reminds them of the Isthmian Games cele- 
brated every three years at a spot some nine 
miles from Corinth itself. Let me presume to 
paraphrase : 

" Do you remember that although many enter 
the lists in your national games, yet only the 
winner receives the prize? In like manner, you, 
who are running the race marked out for you in 
the Christian stadion, should run in such a way 
as to win. You know that every one who com- 
petes in these games must be temperate, not only 
in food and drink, but also in every direction. 
Now these competitors, whether at the Corinth- 
ian Isthmus or in the Olympian Plain, struggle 
for a prize that is perishable — a branch of fading 
olive or pine. But we Christians struggle for a 



160 LIFE AND LIGHT 

prize that is imperishable — even the amaranthine 
crown of perfected character. I also have en- 
tered the lists. When I run, I run with a definite 
goal clearly in view. When I box, I box with a 
real antagonist, not an imaginary. In my case 
that real antagonist is my own body-nature with 
its appetites and lusts ; these I am trying to train 
down to the utmost, and so bring my body-nature 
into absolute subjection to my spiritual ; lest by 
any means, after having served as one of the 
heralds in proclaiming the lists, I myself should 
be cast out of the arena" (i Cor. 9 : 24-27). 

Again, would our apostle warn the Philippian 
Christians against self-complacent sense of per- 
fection ? He tries to do this by setting forth his 
own desperate struggles after the ideal life in 
terms again borrowed from the stadion : 

" Not that I have already reached the goal 
and so obtained the prize ; but I keep pressing 
on in the race, if so be that I may achieve that 
vocation for which Christ Jesus seized me on my 
way to Damascus. Brothers, I do not deem my- 
self yet to have grasped the prize ; on the other 
hand, I am straining every energy to run my race 
and so accomplish my mission ; instead, then, of 
turning back to look at any way-marks I may 



THE OLYMPIC GAMES 161 

have passed, I bend every energy in stretching 
forward to what still lies before me, pressing on 
toward my goal, even the prize of God's heavenly 
vocation of me in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3 : 12-14). 

Again, is our apostle in his second Roman cap- 
tivity awaiting Nero's sentence of martyrdom ? 
He writes to his dear Timothy in language vivid 
with the imagery of the stadion : 

" I am already being poured out as a drink 
offering on the altar of service, and the time of 
my exodus is at hand. I have struggled the good 
struggle, I have finished the race assigned me, 
I have guarded the trust confided to me ; hence- 
forth there is laid up for me the garland — not of 
fading olive — but of immortal righteousness ; 
which our master — the impartial Arbiter — shall 
give to me on that day of final awards ; and not 
only to me, but also to all those who have loved 
his epiphany" (2 Tim. 4 : 6-8). 

Once more, would the writer of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews inspire his readers with patient 
steadfastness in their Christian career ? He also 
uses imagery suggested by the ancient stadion : 

" I have just called out a muster-roll of the Old 
Testament sons of faith ; behold them crowding 
those benches of our Christian stadion, tier on 



1 62 LIFE AND LIGHT 

tier, from righteous Abel onward, surrounding us 
like a mighty cloud of witnesses. Let us also, 
like them, rid ourselves of every kind of encum- 
brance as though so much superfluous flesh, and 
especially the easily entangling mantle of sin, and 
let us run with heroic endurance the race our 
Father has appointed us in the arena of Provi- 
dence, looking away unto Jesus, who is alike our 
goal and our prize, himself both the leader and 
the closer of the mighty lines of the sons of 
faith ; who for the prize that was set before him 
endured the cross, despising shame, and is now 
enjoying as his reward his regal session at the 
right hand of the throne of the Majesty on high" 
(Heb. 12:1, 2). 

May every one of us so acquit himself in the 
Christian stadion as to win the crown of glory 
that fadeth not away. 



XVIII 

The Old Order Changeth 



'The old order changeth, yielding place to new." 



The succeeding of an order new, 

A heavenly kingdom, with a heavenly King." 




XVIII 

ROBABLY the greatest discovery which 
has been made in modern times is the 
ethical discovery that the human race 
is a solidarity or one body politic. True, Socrates 
had caught glimpse of this noble conception when 
he said he was "not an Athenian or a Greek, but a 
citizen of the world "; a sentiment which Terence 
echoed when he declared, " I am a man, and 
nothing that concerns a man do I deem alien 
to me." Nevertheless, Aristotle, broad-minded 
though he was, expressed the general sentiment 
of mankind when he asserted that "of all wars 
those are most necessary and just which are 
made by men against wild beasts, and next, 
those made by Greeks against strangers, who 
are naturally our enemies"; a sentiment which 
the brilliant but morbid philosopher of Geneva, 
Jean Jacques Rousseau, echoed when he pessi- 
mistically affirmed, "War is man's natural state." 

Accordingly the nations have hitherto regarded 

165 



1 66 LIFE AND LIGHT 

themselves as being independent or insular, and 
therefore naturally competitive and hostile. 

Hence the assumed necessity for fortifications, 
permanent armaments, military academies, etc. 
"Assumed" I say: for this well-nigh universal 
conviction of the necessity of wars and therefore 
of standing armies is in my judgment a sample 
of what Bacon calls "idols of the tribe" or 
fallacies incident to mankind in general, and 
also " idols of the theatre," or errors due to im- 
perfect and misleading philosophic systems. In 
other words, this notion of the insularity of 
nations is one of the many fallacies and mis- 
educations bequeathed us from an immemorial, 
possibly pre-adamite, antiquity. Perhaps the 
time has not yet come when we ought to teach 
our youths the duty and practicability of in- 
variably substituting arbitration or some equally 
pacific policy for war in settling international 
disputes. But the time has surely come when 
we ought to teach our youths the duty of study- 
ing this transcendent matter of international rela- 
tions, no longer in the infant realm of traditional 
assumptions and hereditary postulates, but in 
the adult realm of intellectual and ethical in- 
quiry. For example : I think the time has come 



THE OLD ORDER CHANG ETH 167 

when we ought to teach our students in moral 
anthropology to raise some such questions as 
the following : 

"Is it really true that we are living under a law of prog- 
ress, so that what our fathers regarded as right may possibly 
be wrong to-day ? " ' ' Is it really true that right is a matter 
of physical molecules so that physical force does settle 
disputed questions of honor, veracity, morality, ' might thus 
making right ' ? ' ' "Is it really true that ' vox populi, ' is 
always ' vox DeV ?" "Is it really true that there is such a 
thing as i manifest destiny, ' and if so, is ' manifest destiny ' 
therefore always right?" "Is it really true that because 
our flag has once been raised in a particular locality it must 
therefore remain there always, wholly irrespective of the 
moral circumstances under which it was raised?" "Is it 
really true that the 'end sanctifies the means'?" "Is it 
really true that ' victory ' always means ' Providence, ' so that 
Voltaire was right when he said that ' God is always on the 
side of the heaviest battalions'?" "May not polygamy 
and slavery as well as war be defended from the Bible ? ' ' 
' ' Does the founder of Christianity really teach war, or 
peace ? " " Was William Penn' s pacific policy in Pennsyl- 
vania a civic failure ? " " What is the exact arithmetical 
proportion required to transfigure the wickedness of a fight 
between two individuals into the holiness of a war between 
two nations?" "At what precise mathematical point does 
the wrong of duel end and the right of battle begin?" etc., 
etc., etc. 

M 



168 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Such are some of the many grave questions 
which are challenging to-day the profound in- 
vestigation of all true students. They are as 
truly matters of careful research as any ques- 
tions in chemistry or biology. As we no longer 
teach astronomy from the standpoint of Ptolemy 
or biology from the standpoint of Paracelsus, so 
let us no longer teach international ethics from 
the standpoint of hereditary assumption or pre- 
historic tradition. 

Even our Benjamin Rush so long ago as 1798 
proposed the establishment at Washington of a 
Department of Peace which should be co-ordinate 
with the Departments of the Army and Navy. 
Since we have come now, in our twentieth cen- 
tury, to a different stage of human thought and 
development, 

" New occasions teach new duties." 

Hitherto, the competitions, the ambiguities, the 
assumptions, the misunderstandings, the selfish 
feuds of nations have been settled by 

An Old Method. From the wrathful heights 
of Sinai : that lex talionis, which adjusted all 
disputes by physical retaliation, "an eye for an 
eye," etc.; "a life for a life," etc.; brute force 
being the animal standard of ethics. But are 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGE TH 169 

we not now wise enough to observe the law of 
adaptation by which God has been pleased to 
reveal himself — " the law of economy of action." 
Shall we not progress to educate by 

A New Method. From the peaceful height of 
Calvary : the Pax Vobiscum, which regards men 
as mankind, one moral organism, one corporate 
life, and settles all difficulties by Christ's standard 
of Ethics. Of these two methods, one is : 

Outward. Animal in force, brutalizing in 
result ; killing, exterminating, wasting strength, 
youth, manhood ; lowering the capacities of love, 
joy, hope ; checking development, never pro- 
ducing, forever consuming. The other is : 

Inward. Gentle in progress ; healing the 
wounds of society by the therapeutics of love ; 
co-operative in moral life, constructive, produc- 
tive, economical. 

Why should not our own beloved America 
lead all other nations in a higher education in 
the loftier Science of sciences, Christian Ethics ? 

Mankind needs an esprit de corps ; the sense 
of corporate life. And this esprit de corps, this 
sense of organic relations, can come to mankind 
only through the avenue and in the sphere of 
the Lord of Eternal Ethics. 



170 LIFE AND LIGHT 

The teachings of those higher personal, social, 
national, international Ethics must be 

First, Negative. To rectify misconceptions 
and historic assumptions : 

That greatness consists in vastness ; 

That might consists in force ; 

That right consists in numbers ; 

That patriotism consists in following the flag; 

That victory proves Providence ; 

That Old Testament is Christianity. 

Second, Positive : 

That righteousness consists in altruism ; 
That patriotism consists in internationalism ; 
That chivalry consists in Beatitudes ; 
That manliness consists in Christliness. 

There are two men in every man, the lower 
and the higher. The lower man is egotistic, 
isolated, aggressive. War appeals to him be- 
cause his moral obtuseness clings to the methods 
of animal life. Despite all its so-called "glory," 
what is war but the enlarging of the tusks, claws, 
stings of animals, into the mangling, tearing, 
crunching bullet, shell, bomb, cannon ? 

The higher man in each man is altruistic, 



THE OLD ORDER CHANGE TH 171 

loving his neighbor, co-operative, productive, 
economical, seeking to pursue after a divine 
Ideal, crying : 

Arise and fly 
The reeling faun, the sensual feast ; 
Move upward, working out the beast, 
And let the ape and tiger die ; 

aspiring to the wonder of Christ's character. To 
follow Christ's teachings is to dwell in the lofty 
freedom of his truth— it is to end all feuds and 
rivalries and to league all mankind in a covenant 
of endless amity. 

Peace requires far more courage than war. 
The true warrior is he who carries the olive 
bough. The true hero is he who wields that 
sword of the Spirit which Christ "came to 
bring," according to Christ's own methods. The 
athletics of the Beatitudes are the very essence 
and pith of a genuine manhood. They require 
sturdy moral muscle and robust mental disci- 
pline. Christ's altruism is the true philosophy 
of society. 

Do you tell me this is all impracticable, 
Utopian ? 

Do you ask : 



172 LIFE AND LIGHT 

Watchman, tell us of the night, 
What its signs and promise are ? 

Look backward from to-day, 1897, to Ae time 
when we had no International Sunday-school 
Lessons ; no interdenominational salutations and 
reciprocities ; no interminglings of peoples ; no 
International Court of Arbitration. Thank God 
for that word " inter." 

Look onward. 

Not in vain the distance beacons. 

Observe carefully the changing trend of human 
thought, and beware lest you remain stranded. 

& Homme a Venir 

is no vain dream. The Beatitudes are the re- 
sistless dynamic forces which hasten the reign of 
Universal Peace. 

Sounding through the spaces, though as yet 
faint and far, yet surely sounding, are the bells 

that 

Ring out the thousand years of war, 

Ring in the thousand years of peace ; 

Ring in the Christ that is to be. 



XIX 

The Universal Homo 



Christ ! to Thee, with God the Father, 

And, O Holy Ghost, to Thee ! 
Hymn, and chant, and high thanksgiving, 

And unwearied praises be ; 
Honor, glory, and dominion, 

And eternal victory, 
Evermore and evermore. Amen. 

— Aurelius Clemens Prudentius 
(Fourth Century). 




XIX 

iESUS was — to use his own favorite 
designation of himself, recurring some 
eighty times in the Gospels — " The Son 
of Man" Observe : the designation is not " a 
son of man " ; neither is it "a son of men"; 
neither is it " the son of men " ; but it is " The 
Son of Man." As such the designation is ab- 
solutely unique. See how the Son of Man 
illustrates in himself all essential human capaci- 
ties — for example, reason, imagination, con- 
science, courage, patience, faith, hope, love ; 
blending in his own pure whiteness all colors of 
all manly virtues, all hues of all womanly graces, 
as though he himself were Eternal God's own 
infinite, ever-blessed sunlight. In other words, 
Jesus is the universal Homo ; blending in himself 
all races, ages, capacities, temperaments, types. 
See how he blends in himself the race-marks of 
the three sons of Noah — Shemitic reverence, 

Hamitic force, Japhetic culture. Jesus is the trans- 

175 



176 LIFE AND LIGHT 

cendent Vir, from the hem of whose robe virtue 
is ever flowing ; himself alike the radiating focus 
of all best impulses and the converging focus of 
all best achievements. Towering above all man- 
kind, yet permeating all mankind, Jesus is man- 
kind's one mighty archetypal, antitypal, consum- 
mate Man ; the symbol of perfected human 
nature ; the Alpha and the Omega of unfolded, 
full-filled humanity. The Son of Man, he, and 
none but he, realizes Auguste Comte's majestic 
dream of the apotheosis of humanity ; the very 
refusal of the great positivist to enshrine Jesus 
in his own Pantheon being his own possibly 
unconscious, but certainly transcendent tribute 
to the Man of men. 

Glance for a moment at the universality of 
Christ's religion. All other religions are, com- 
paratively speaking, more or less topographical ; 
for example, there is the Institute religion of 
Sinai ; the Priest religion of Egypt ; the Hero 
religion of Greece ; the Empire religion of Rome ; 
the Brahma religion of India ; the Buddha relig- 
ion of Ceylon ; the Valhalla religion of Scandi- 
navia ; the Islam religion of Arabia ; the Spirit 
religion of our aboriginal America. But Chris- 
tianity is the religion of mankind. Baal was 



THE UNIVERSAL HOMO 177 

Phoenician ; Osiris was Egyptian ; Apollo was 
Greek ; Mars was Roman ; Zoroaster was Per- 
sian ; Confucius was Chinese ; Gautama was 
Indian ; Odin was Norse ; Mohammed was Ara- 
bian. But Jesus is the Son of Man. And there- 
fore his religion is the religion of the sons of men ; 
equally suited to black and white, mountaineers 
and lowlanders, landsmen and seamen, philoso- 
phers and catechumens, patriarchs and children. 
See how he absorbs and assimilates into his own 
perfect religion all that is good in other religions 
— the symbolism of Judea ; the aspiration of 
Egypt ; the sestheticism of Greece ; the loyalty 
of Rome ; the hopefulness of Persia ; the con- 
servatism of China ; the mysticism of India ; the 
enthusiasm of Arabia ; the energy of Teutonia ; 
the versatilities of Christendom. Like the great 
sea, his religion keeps flowingly conterminous 
with the ever-changing shore-line of every conti- 
nent, every island, every promontory, every estu- 
ary. And this because he is the Son of Man, in 
whom there is and can be neither Jew nor non- 
Jew, neither Greek nor Scythian, neither Asiatic 
nor American, neither male nor female ; but all 
are one new man in him, and he is All in All. 



XX 

The Outlook for the 
Twentieth Century' 



A. d. 1898. 



Surely the world doth wait 
The coming of its Redeemer. 

— Longfellow. 




XX 

FEEL sure that the general trend of 
the next century will be onward and 
upward ; and this because I feel sure 
that the Lord of the Centuries has not lived 
and died and risen in vain. Accordingly, I 
believe that the spirit of Jesus Christ will be 
the dominant force in the coming century. I 
believe, for instance, that his Mountain Ser- 
mon will become more and more the supreme 
constitution for Mankind ; that as the church 
understands more and more his mission and 
character, and teachings and work, her con- 
ceptions of God will be more and more height- 
ened, and her conceptions of man will be more 
and more broadened ; that the instincts of ani- 
malism will be lost in the sense of divine son- 
ship ; that agnosticism will melt in the heat of 
personal Christian experiences ; that anarchy 
against man will flee before loyalty to God ; that 
the kingdom of God will be less in word and 

181 



1 82 LIFE AND LIGHT 

more in power ; that sectarianism will be swal- 
lowed in catholicity ; that ecclesiasticism will 
wane and Christianity will wax ; that character 
rather than opinion will be the test of ortho- 
doxy ; that Church and State will dissolve part- 
nership ; that Church and Academy will join 
hands in glad bridal — the church acknowledging 
the Bible of Nature and the academy acknowl- 
edging the Bible of Scripture — that the standard 
of ethics — personal, domestic, social, educational, 
commercial, national, international, Christian — 
will grow higher and higher ; that heredity will 
gain Christian momentum ; that environment 
will undergo transfiguration ; that the sense of 
individual responsibility, and also of corporate 
community, will alike deepen ; that society will 
agree that chastity shall be as binding on man 
as on woman — that life-imprisonment will sup- 
plant death penalty ; that legislation, whether 
mandatory or prohibitory, will make way for in- 
telligent and cheerful self-regimen ; that office 
will soar from ambition into service ; that wealth 
and work, instead of quarreling, will co-operate ; 
that culture will become more conscious of ac- 
countability to God and to man ; that society 
will tend toward equilibrium of forces and of 



THE OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 183 

functions ; that egotistic insularity will be merged 
into altruistic terrestrialism ; that the Jew will 
regain the blessings promised in Abraham ; that 
Christendom will disarm ; that the whole world 
will become one neighborhood ; that human 
units will grow into human unity — men into 
Man ; that the Golden Rule will become more 
and more the law of society ; that faith, hope, 
love will be acknowledged the human trinity — 
in brief, that the twentieth century will be in 
very truth a century of Christocracy. 



L'Envoi 



LOVE 

Love is the ethereal medium pervading 
God's moral universe, by means of which are 
propagated the motions of his impulses, the 
heat of his grace, the light of his truth, the 
electricity of his activities, . the magnetism 
of his nature, the affinities of his character, 

THE GRAVITATION OF HIS WILL. In BRIEF, LoVE 

is the very definition of deity himself. " god 
is love ; and he that abideth in love abideth 
in God, and God in him." 



-)Jf- 



flllemorabiKa 



H Character 

Tin Jttlemortam : George Dana 3Boavbman 



By William Cleaver Wilkinson 

Large-minded and great-hearted; loyal friend 
Master of all amenity and grace, 
Yet capable of scorning what was base 
With a serene severity to send 
A thrill of pleasure to the pulses' end, 
A sympathetic flush into the face, 
Of any noble who might chance in place 
Hearing to such severity to lend; 

Brave, manly, gentle, gentle-manly, sweet, 
He had his arch, appealing, childlike ways, 

At times, as if of helplessness complete ; 
And he was amiably fond of praise, 

But fond not less of praising, as was meet- 
Peace-lover and peace-maker all his days! 
University of Chicago 



Memorabilia 



**fdgg|F asked to characterize in one word the distin- 
I WSi g u ishing feature of that ideal Christian gentle- 
rt ^ 1 ™ man, George Dana Boardman," writes Dr. Kerr 
Boyce Tupper, his eminent pulpit successor, " I should 
say, Manliness, in the broad, inclusive sense of that 
large term. This is not a single trait of character sep- 
arable from others ; it is rather a resultant, the fulness 
and harmony that arise from a combination of the higher 
human excellencies. It is what a man weighs morally, 
the substance of life after the chaff has been blown 
away. It is devotion to right in a large way, on a gen- 
erous scale. Manliness is more than eloquence or titles 
or position. Doctor Boardman was an author, gifted 
and voluminous ; a scholar, profound and accurate ; a 
preacher, clear and instructive ; a pastor, loving and 
wise ; a man, strong and sincere ; a Christian, presenting 
ever in himself constant and consistent illustrations of 
the glorious principles of the blessed evangel he de- 
lighted to preach. Our friend and brother won admira- 
tion, honor, and respect wherever known. Few men so 
translated high thinking into noble living, few Christian 
ministers so matched creed with character, doctrine with 
doing, sermon with service. More than his finely stored 
intellect was his beautiful, generous, Christlike spirit, 

3 



4 MEMORABILIA 

rich in transcendent virtues, which are the girdle of a 
man's real beauty, himself an admirable moral force as 
well as an attractive Christian personality. 

" His character was essentially aromatic ; he bore al- 
ways an atmosphere of fragrant and enduring influence, 
with an exquisite tenderness of thought and speech. 
His manners were the translation of his spirit into 
form, the true balance and harmony of soul, the shadow 
of virtue itself." 



"The first thing," says Doctor Morse, "that impresses 
one concerning Doctor Boardman, whether in his books 
or in personal intercourse, is his courtesy. He was first 
of all a Christian gentleman. With some courteous men, 
politeness is an outward acquisition, a garment that may 
often be forgotten or worn awry. With him it was a 
cultivated instinct, a trained spontaneity, an inner con- 
stitutional habit ; to forget it would be as if he forgot to 
breathe. The fellahin of Egypt and the peasants of 
Galilee were as much impressed by it as were the assem- 
blies of scholars and the men of light and leading in all 
countries. It was simply his inward altruism moving 
outward, his unselfish thought of his neighbor first, 
before himself, which characterized his entire life from 
childhood to maturity." 



Willis Fletcher Johnson, the eminent New York ed- 
itor, writes : " It was an inestimable privilege to know 
Doctor Boardman, and it is likewise a privilege to be 
permitted to pay even a part of the tribute due to his 



MEMORABILIA 5 

great worth. He was conspicuously a man who de- 
voted himself to his calling. There was in his whole 
career no straining for applause or notoriety and no 
seeking after selfish interests. He strove with all the 
energies of his rare mind and heart to preach the gospel. 
" He was a most effective and convincing pulpit ora- 
tor and master of a pure and fascinating English style. 
His ripe scholarship made him a potent force in mat- 
ters of theological and philosophical education, and en- 
abled him to make on the thought of his time a deep 
and lasting mark. Measured by enduring influence for 
righteousness, Doctor Boardman must ever stand in the 
foremost rank of Christian ministers of his time and 
land. The work he did was so well done that his pass- 
ing away did not affect it — the workman is gone but 
the work abides." 



Dr. Lyman Abbott writes : " It is a gratification to 
me to be asked to add a few lines to the memorabilia of 
Dr. George Dana Boardman, to accompany the volume 
of his addresses, soon to be issued. 

" Doctor Boardman seemed to me to belong in that 
happily increasing number of men who, thoroughly loyal 
to their own denomination yet perceive that Christianity 
is larger, not only than any one particular church, but 
also larger than the church universal. This breadth was 
not that of indifference or apathy, nor was it due to any 
notion that faith is less than knowledge, or that spir- 
itual truth is to us incomprehensible, and therefore must 
be passed by in silence. It was due to his realization 
of the truth, of which in all his writings, so far as I 



6 MEMORABILIA 

know them, he was an apostle — that spiritual truth is 
greater than any single expression of it ; due to his reali- 
zation of the principle declared by Paul in the saying : 
1 We know in part and we prophesy in part, but when 
that which is perfect is come, then that which is in 
part shall be done away.' I 

" In other words, his breadth, coupled with intensity, 
strong convictions, and the courage of his convictions, 
was due not to any tolerance of error, but to the spiritual 
insight which perceives that in all forms of sincere faith 
there is some measure of spiritual truth. This quality, 
which was apparent in his writings, was not less apparent 
in personal conference. I met him but rarely, but always 
with a larger sense of the greatness and the value of life." 



Doctor Williams, of New York, says : " Doctor 
Boardman was a man of large intellectual gifts and of 
high spirituality. The purity, sweetness, generosity, 
and unselfishness of childhood characterized him 
throughout his life. Feeling in the finer sense was 
apparent in all his work. Not as our ^Eschylus, pro- 
claiming in thunderous tones the majesty of divine 
law, nor as our Euripides, delineating for us with wit 
and wisdom the lights and shadows of modern life, do we 
hail him ; rather do we recognize in him our Sophocles, 
lofty in feeling, exquisite in style, perfect in grace, a 
teacher of moral wisdom." 



" My acquaintance with Doctor Boardman," says Mr. 
Warren Teele, an esteemed government official in Iowa, 



MEMORABILIA 7 

"began in his early years, when amid poverty and 
hardships he was reading law. His parents were dead, 
he had no home ; his childhood behind him had been 
inexpressibly sad ; his future before him promised little 
but privation to his frail health. His youth was 
launched into the work of the world, lacking all those 
home affections which make a boy strong. He hid all 
that was adverse in his environment under a cheerful 
wit and quick thoughtfulness for others. His brilliant 
talents which made him the desire and delight of all 
those who knew him, made us wonder what he might 
become if he lived. Antigonus, when asked who would 
become his best captain, replied : ' Pyrrhus, if he can 
grow old.' 

" But behind these talents there was something not 
quite easily understood, as of a soul apart and conse- 
crate; something behind the intense love of nature 
which took him so often into the groves and under the 
stars ; something of a far remoteness, as of one who 
had messages from the Infinite. On one occasion 
we had walked far away, when a sharp thunderstorm 
came up ; I trembled for him as he stood exposed to the 
fierce blast in his thin, worn black cape, his one wrap in 
summer and winter ; but he stood calmly looking up 
with an ecstatic awe in his face, and whispered : 

" « I am in the presence of my Maker ; never so near 
his adorable majesty as now.' 

" This was one of the very rare times in which he 
ever broke through that gentle, courteous reserve 
which the cruel sufferings of his childhood had forced 
as a necessity of self-defense upon his exceedingly deli- 
cate, sensitive nature. It was a glimpse into the hid- 



8 MEMORABILIA 

den depths of his nature, and as such I have ever 
cherished it. 

"He was about to be admitted to the bar in St. 
Louis when a dangerous attack of cholera changed the 
whole purpose of his life. He resolved to enter the 
ministry and set out for the East to fight his way through 
college and seminary with gallant courage. Such frail 
health, such brilliant gifts, such lofty ideals, such genu- 
ine consecration, such sensitive delicacy, such proba- 
bilities of suffering ! With what deep sorrow I bade 
him good-bye. 

" I held him then as I hold him now, when years 
have finished his service, physically bravest of the brave, 
and morally, noblest of the noble, and of all men I 
have ever known, the purest and most lovable." 



"Was it not," inquires Laurens, of Boston, "the very 
privations and hardships of Doctor Boardman's painful 
early life, with its fortitude and enforced repression 
amid varying and uncongenial environment, that was 
the source of his success in preaching, especially in his 
reaching young men ? For his power over young men was 
great and enduring. His early ministry in the university 
city of Rochester, had a marked influence on the lives 
of many young men since filling proud positions." 



" My recollections of Doctor Boardman," says Dr. E. 
H. Johnson, an eminent divine and author, " date back 
forty-five years, to the time when he preached in Roches- 
ter. His slender frame, his frail health, his threatening 



MEMORABILIA 9 

cough, and his scanty strength which sometimes failed 
him, so that he was unable to finish his service in due 
form and order, combined with his winsome personality 
and his gorgeous eloquence and his dauntless perse- 
verance in work — to make him most fascinating. We 
students of the university used to line the galleries and 
hang over them in the intentness of listening. It was 
the glow of sentiment, not the parade of words ; not 
even entirely the rhyme and melody of phrases that 
made his address so entrancing. 

"We held that in the Lyceum lectures not even 
George W. Curtis could equal our Boardman in music 
and rapture of style." 



Dr. Philip L. Jones writes : " I came in touch with 
Doctor Boardman while a student at Rochester. He 
was the ideal of all the college students. His boyish 
form, his graceful bearing, his manifest enthusiasm, his 
evident grip of things, all suggested to them their own 
future. He gave the students an outward look on life 
and an inward vision of thought, with words in which to 
clothe them, which have remained with them through 
the years. 

" In 1870 I became associated with him as pastor of 
the mission chapel of his church which bore his name. 
I found him all and more my student fancy had thought 
him. Kind, considerate, suggestive, helpful, no young 
pastor could have found more indulgent mentor, no 
1 colleague ' as he graciously called me, more considerate 
associate. No transaction of all the steps attending 
the transformation of inchoate mission into established 



io MEMORABILIA 

church with a building commodious and costly brings 
other than the most grateful memory, and each enlarged 
a friendship for him which must remain while individ- 
uality exists." 



Another, Dr. Wayland Hoyt, says of this period : 
" I owe a great debt to the vision-giving teachings of 
Doctor Boardman. I can hear him now, after all the 
years : the clear voice, which one wondered could come 
from so slight a body ; the fascinating Boardman, the 
exquisite intonations of rare music, the winsome bear- 
ing — for he had never the slightest tinge of self-conceit 
— the reverence of attitude and gesture in Scripture 
readings, and the masterly sermons." 



Of his later years Mr. Mitchell Bronk writes : " He 
had always a large following of young men in his 
church, in the city ; among the students of Philadelphia, 
at Crozer Seminary, everywhere. You had only to be 
a young man and interested in Christian culture, and he 
could not do too much for you. Many of the Crozer 
alumni look back upon their acquaintance with Doctor 
Boardman as one of the priceless features of their 
course. In modernity of scholarship his last book is 
as up-to-date as if he had been under thirty." 



Dr. Edward Braislin, of Colorado Springs, Colo., 
writes : " During those splendid years at Broad and 
Arch Streets, Doctor Boardman molded my life, as he 



MEMORABILIA n 

did that of hundreds of other young men. Life took on 
new power to every one who might be his friend. Had 
there been any sham or pretense or flaw in the man, 
we keen young critics should have discovered it, but he 
was without a peer. Unmanly impulses fled from his 
nature. He never betrayed in the confessional of pri- 
vate friendship any word of another that he would not 
have said in his presence ; he wore always the white 
moly of the blameless Arthur. 

" I knew him better than others, for I entered the 
ministry and so came nearer, and in every official func- 
tion of that solemn profession found him ever ready to 
counsel and to bless. By the Adirondack campfire, in 
the hills of New Hampshire, on the ocean, in England, 
Scotland, and Tyrol, for twenty-two years it was my 
great privilege to be with him, to hear him talk of the 
great themes of life and Life eternal. 

"He was a splendid traveling companion, for his 
learning was encyclopedic in his sweeps down the cen- 
turies of history. His characterizations of the great 
men of each country were always brilliant, and his 
reading of the daily newspapers in French or German 
or Greek or Italian, as it chanced, kept him always 
well informed on the world's events. 

" He was a combination of heroic qualities. He was 
like Sir Philip Sidney, chivalric to sacrifice ; like the 
knight Sir Galahad, pure to accomplish ; like the Cheva- 
lier Bayard, ever without fear and without reproach. 

"He was generosity itself, but very rigid never to 
owe any man a penny, even for a day. 

" I think he was preeminent in his ability to distin- 
guish between things important and things unim- 



12 MEMORABILIA 

portant, or as he would say, between things transient 
and things eternal. Knowledge was to him important 
in proportion to its moral and spiritual utility. He be- 
lieved that the function of truth was to illuminate duty 
or to reveal destiny. To him God was immanent in his 
universe, the present Lord of the intellectual life, and 
that knowledge was responsibility and commission. 
He was more anxious to know how to use what he knew 
than he was to acquire knowledge. Accordingly there 
was never a sermon or address written without the pre- 
vious offering of the blank pages upon which it was to 
be written, to God. Where others offer work accom- 
plished upon the altar, he offered the storehouse and 
the workman and sought to have all specialization not 
his, but God's. Armed as have been few men with 
controversial weapons and keenly alive to every phase 
of current discussion, Doctor Boardman was peerless 
among his contemporaries for his brotherly love. No 
man was ever more constrained than was he by the 
spirit of constructive peace. Through the labyrinth of 
years one close thread held this man true to a definite 
purpose. He would glorify Christ. This was so un- 
varying a passion that it gave unity to all he was and 
all he did. 

"Once, when unexpectedly receiving from an in- 
quisitive friend a sudden lance-thrust into his gentle 
reserve, ' Tell me the secret of your success ! ' he re- 
plied with evident pain and sensitive shrinking : 'I am 
not sure that there is what you term "success." I 
have ever striven to be loyal to Christ and to my 
vow of consecration as his servant. I strive each day 
to lift to him the thoughts and hearts of men.' " 



MEMORABILIA 13 

Dr. Edwin T. Darby writes : " In accepting the min- 
istry of our large and historic church Doctor Boardman 
spoke to us of an ideal to which it was his purpose to 
devote his life. 

" « To me,' said he, * the Bible is the one great classic 
of literature, and I hold its study to be of preeminent 
importance, The dominating ideal of my ministry 
among you I desire to be to unfold the word of God 
as written in the two Bibles ; the Bible of Scripture 
and the Bible of Nature, for science and religion are 
not antithetic. I believe them complemental, science 
being the natural side of religion, religion being the 
spiritual side of science.' To accomplish this purpose he 
planned to travel ; to gain thorough topographical knowl- 
edge of the Holy Land, by acquaintance with archae- 
ological scholars whom he knew through membership in 
the Palestine Exploration Society, the Egyptian Ex- 
ploration Society, etc. I was his happy companion in 
Eastern travel. It would be impossible to tell all, or 
even a small part, of the pleasure which I enjoyed while 
in Doctor Boardman's company. There were three 
days in our travels which I remember with greatest pleas- 
ure. The first was our visit to the Pyramids, the second 
the ascent of Mount Sinai, and the third our entrance 
into Jerusalem. 

"In 1 87 1 there were three ways of getting to the 
Pyramids, nine miles from Cairo — to walk, to ride a 
donkey, or to go in a carriage. The distance from 
Cairo was a little too great for the first, and we decided 
to try the donkey. I shall never forget that ride, for 
the donkey upon which I was seated was so small that 
my feet almost touched the ground and the appearance 



14 MEMORABILIA 

I made was a source of much amusement to Doctor 
Boardman. There was only a pontoon bridge across 
the Nile at that time, the superb Kasr el Nil bridge 
having been built some years later. 

" I remember that the Pyramids looked nearly as 
large when we first caught sight of them, six miles 
away, under the lebbek trees, as they did when we 
reached them. The beautiful Moorish building, named 
after the first king of Egypt, the Mena House, was not 
then standing, so that our introduction to the hoary 
monuments by toiling up the hillocks of sand by the bat- 
tered Sphinx was more impressive than that of the mod- 
ern traveler. We climbed the mighty side of the great 
pyramid of Khufu, or Cheops ; crawled into its low, 
dark, stifling chambers, disturbing the bats ; penetrated 
to the king's chamber, with its mysterious coffer and 
its scientific archives, and crept out again into free, 
bright air. These awesome places were deeply thrill- 
ing, and I recall Doctor Boardman's luminous eyes as 
he said : 

" < Well, doctor, this has been the greatest day of my 
life except one, and that was the day I was married to 
my dear wife.' 

" The second great day was our visit to Mount Sinai. 
We had been in the desert riding our camels for a 
whole week and much of the time suffering intensely 
from the heat. As we came out of Wadi Sheikh onto 
the plain in front of the mountain, Doctor Board- 
man cried with enthusiasm, ' That is Mount Sinai. I 
should know it if I were in any other country.' 

" We crossed the plain and camped for the night. 
Early in the morning we visited the Convent of St. 



MEMORABILIA 15 

Katharine's, where some dozen years before Count 
Tischendorf had discovered in a waste basket the price- 
less * Codex Sinaiticus.' We obtained the services of 
two monks to act as our guides in ascending the moun- 
tain, Jebel Musa. The emotions in standing on the 
summit of the Mount of the Law, or those of our Sab- 
bath services the day after in the vast plain below are 
impossible to describe. 

" Doctor Boardman's cheerful patience and wit were 
never exhausted by adversities, even by some of our 
adventures in Philistia. We left our camels at Gaza 
and took horses, and on the Jaffa road our dragoman 
lost his way. We rode from the early morning, on and 
on till night. Never shall I forget the groans that 
unhappy dragoman uttered when he discovered that we 
knew he was lost in an unknown country. Towards 
midnight we discovered a bright light, which cheered 
us. On approaching it proved to be a cave of robbers. 
Our dragoman trembled with alarm, desired me to pre- 
sent firearms in my right hand as we ventured to 
enter. The pacific doctor suggested baksheesh in the 
other hand. The cave was a large rock recess, with a 
fire blazing in the center, and grouped around it some 
dozen naked men and women, with goats, buffaloes, and 
donkeys. The odorous atmosphere made one reel, but 
eighteen hours in the saddle without food made us bold 
to ask these savages for food and drink in exchange for 
baksheesh. A large leathern skin was brought, ostensibly 
filled with goats' milk. In his excessive thirst the doc- 
tor took a draught, but quickly stopped, saying as he 
handed it back to me with a most captivating smile : 

" ' Something besides milk in this, doctor ! ' 



1 6 MEMORABILIA 

"Examining the leathern jar as best I might by the 
light of the fire and the fiery eyes upon me, it seemed 
to be full of dead flies and nameless other remains. 
Our fear-stricken dragoman warned us to offer large 
baksheesh and ask for a guide as our only means of escape 
from these fierce savages. It was no time to hesitate. 
We offered a large sum, which induced one Goliath 
robber to come out and guide us to the lost road. Be- 
tween two and three o'clock in the morning we reached 
the goal of our long pilgrimage and camped outside the 
walls of Jerusalem, the most memorable Sunday morn- 
ing of our lives, having ridden, it was estimated, between 
sixty and eighty miles. 

"About four o'clock that afternoon we approached the 
city, but instead of entering at the Jaffa gate we skirted 
the city and ascended Mount Olivet. It was Doctor 
Boardman's long cherished desire to look down first 
upon the City of Peace from the top of the sacred 
mountain. We lingered reverently by the old olives at 
the Garden of Gethsemane, and then climbed to the 
summit of Mount Olivet and there had our first view of 
the Holy City. By this time the sun was setting in 
the west and the gilded domes of the Mosque of Omar 
and the Holy Sepulchre were aflame with light and the 
mountains were purple. It was an indelible picture of 
the most affecting, momentous scenes in the great 
tragedy of humanity, a sacred memory far beyond words. 

" It is now thirty-four years since we were together 
in those sacred places and yet I remember the details 
as though it were but yesterday. I have lived over and 
over again those delightful days that I spent in his 
company. He was the most charming companion that 



MEMORABILIA 17 

I ever knew, always unselfish and never depressed even 
though, at the end of a long and weary day of travel, we 
would reach our tents at night very tired and hungry. 
His tireless mind, his ever-ready wit, his marvelous 
store of knowledge, his simplicity, his utter lack of self- 
consciousness and never-failing thought of others, all 
these qualities remain, 

1 ' a deathless memory entwined 
With all that conquers, rules, or charms the mind. ' ' 



" Prince of exegetes ! " cries Doctor Judson, the emi- 
nent professor of homiletics, "who used to lead his 
people beside the still waters of the holy Book, travers- 
ing with them the entire Bible from Genesis to Revela- 
tion inclusive, and that, merely as an aside at his Wednes- 
day Evening Lectures without encroaching upon the 
Sunday services and the regular week-night prayer 
meeting of the church, — a feat of exposition which I 
believe to be unparalleled in the whole history of the 
Christian church. 

u As a careful student of the original text, as unfolder 
of the hidden meaning of obscure passages and of the 
spiritual richness of the deep truths of God's word in 
language so plain and direct that the mind can grasp it and 
the heart appropriate it to the need of daily life, these 
Wednesday Evening Lectures can hardly be surpassed. 

" These Bible instructions rightfully began in the 
Gospels, as Bible studies should. The whole New 
Testament series — six hundred and sixty-six — were con- 
cluded in 1882 and printed as 'Titles for Private Dis- 
tribution.' Many copies were at once ordered by 



1 8 MEMORABILIA 

professors in various seminaries for use ' as a course in 
biographical theology.' 

" Two other editions of the ' Titles,' when the whole 
series, nine hundred and seventy when completed, were 
issued by the Sunday School Union, entitled < Topical 
Index of the Scriptures.' 

" The only record of these nearly one thousand care- 
fully prepared studies that now exists is in these pam- 
phlets, 'The Titles of Wednesday Evening Lectures.' 
Sunday-school teachers call them ' far more suggestive 
than many a commentary.' Of these lectures, the labor- 
loving author of the Variorum Shakespeare, says they 
were 'work enough for a lifetime for any ordinary man.' ' 



"Only a series of Titles," writes the accomplished 
critic, Dr. William Cleaver Wilkinson, " but each title 
has a character ; there are no chance words and phrases, 
but study and most loving heed went into the choice of 
each one of them — it is a whole library of exegesis. 
You are fairly dazzled from one compact, pregnant, 
happy phrase to another. 

" His fine Greek scholarship brought him into corre- 
spondence with the authoritative exegetes, and in his 
visits to England into close personal friendship with 
such workers as Dean Alford, Bishop Ellicott, Bishop 
Westcott, Bishop Perowne, Dean Stanley, and others ; 
and he met the illustrious Board of Revision in the 
famous Jerusalem Chamber. 

" ■ His scholarship,' said these English friends, 'is an 
atmosphere, a presence. It flashes out in unexpected 
ways, all unconsciously to himself.' " 



MEMORABILIA 19 

" The records of Doctor Boardman's church bear this 
testimony as to his service : « We believe this achieve- 
ment of continuous labor to be unequaled. These lec- 
tures in addition to the Sunday sermons would make (if 
reported) sixty-four duodecimo volumes of three hun-' 
dred and fifty pages each. They constitute Doctor 
Boardman's sufficient monument on which may well be 
inscribed, his own truthful, but too modest words : 

" ' He tried to unfold the word of God' " 



" How was it," inquires the German scholar, Doctor 
Rauschenbusch, " that this orphaned boy of the tropics, 
bearing always the bravely hidden suffering of cruel 
injuries inflicted on his helpless childhood, accomplished 
so much hard work, and that too, in so many spheres ? 
He held so many offices, in city and State, and the high- 
est his own denomination could give him ; he filled so 
large a place in public interests ; he was a member of so 
many organizations — the Historical Society, the Philo- 
sophical Society, the Oriental Society, the Academy of 
Sciences, the Victoria Institute, the Academy of Political 
Science ; was eagerly sought for as a presiding parlia- 
mentarian ; was president of the New England Society 
and many other societies, trustee of several universities 
and institutions of learning, etc. No wonder that his 
incessant industry occupied nights as well as days. 

" What lofty courage, what dauntless pursuits of high 
ideals, that wrought out, not great learning, not fame 
merely, but something far higher ; that supreme self- 
control, that harmony of powers, in noble thinking and 
sane living — the moral altitude of life's sovereign power ! 



20 MEMORABILIA 

" His famous free noonday lectures on the « Creative 
Week ' not only formed an epoch in Philadelphia, but 
had a wide influence all over the land in changing the 
belief in a verbally inspired history into the spiritual 
significance of a religious parable. His literary ability 
and his infinite tact, his vivacity of style, his candor 
and openness to truth, and his utter lack of self, gave 
to his brave thinking its power. 

"These lectures were issued in book form, of which 
the first edition of three thousand was sold in one week, 
and which after more than a quarter of a century are 
still selling. His style of presenting truth was not the 
didactic, which is the easiest, but the suggestive — for a 
suggestion best expresses the spirit of a thought. 

" More than any other preacher, he solved the problem 
of teaching science and religion as complemental. To 
quote his words, ' The true scientist is a theological 
specialist in the Bible of nature, and the true theologian 
is a scientific specialist in the Bible of Scripture.' 

" 'The force of his ethical conclusions and appeals is 
never broken by false science, faulty exegesis, or inade- 
quate philosophy.' He has never published his guesses, 
nor wearied men with the processes of his thinking ; he 
simply tells, in the simplest, clearest, most compact and 
elegant English, the results of the widest reading and 
the profoundest meditation of the industrious years." 



An eminent Hebrew rabbi of Philadelphia, writing of 
the busy years as they swept on in large activities, 
varied duties and demands, says : " There was no appeal 
to any cause that might promote human welfare, to 



MEMORABILIA 21 

which he remained deaf. The spirit of love knows no 
boundaries of sect, creed, race, or nationality, and Doctor 
Boardman acted on this principle. No man ever had a 
keener sense of the value of time, yet no man ever gave 
time more willingly." 



" His life," says Mr. Justice Lore, " touched every 
phase of educational, moral, and religious life in our 
communities. With him it was one constant battle, 
fought with a heroism that was of itself sufficient to 
use up all his energies. 

"The time required for the manifold demands of 
public charities, directorates, committees, trusteeships, 
societies, lectureships, all literary work, was never taken 
from his consecrated duties to his church. There were 
always the nights in which he lengthened the days. 
That this ceaseless toil several times nearly cost his life, 
only intensified his desire to work for his fellow-men 
and, as he said, * to lift hearts to Christ. 

" His love for young men was strong and ardent ; he 
longed to help their doubts and struggles ; for them he 
wrote his ' Problem of Jesus,' by far the most impor- 
tant of his books ; * unique in its intense directness, 
concentration, clearness, and a cumulative force that is 
tremendous.' " 



Professor Jastrow, of the University of Pennsylvania, 
writes : "Asa moral force in civic and university life 
in Philadelphia, his clear penetration and balanced calm 
of judgment settled many problems. 



22 MEMORABILIA 

" None of his gifts or graces could have given to 
Doctor Boardman's work its permanent power and effi- 
cacy had they not been dominated by a spirit of self- 
forgetting love for his fellow-men. His earliest effort in 
beginning public life, his last cry in leaving it, was the 
same : 'Let me try to do yet a little good in the world.' 

" Doctor Boardman realized in his utterances, his 
works, and in his activity in the many channels into 
which it was directed, that it was more blessed to give 
than to take, and so he gave ; gave his time, gave his 
means, gave his strength, gave all his energies to the 
work that he set out to do, and he did all this in the 
charitable spirit, the spirit of sympathy with his fellows, 
of devotion to the highest ends of mankind, of con- 
sideration for the shortcomings of man, in the spirit of 
love, aye with that love of which we read that it is * as 
strong as death, as unyielding as the grave.' 

" Naturally, Doctor Boardman's distinctive work as a 
public teacher was eirenic. To use his own words, his 
purpose was : 

" i Not to argue y but to inquire ; not to destroy, but to 
upbuild ; not to dispraise creeds, but to exalt Christ! 

" It was sometimes said of him as of his friend Dean 
Stanley, whom he much resembled in mental character- 
istics : ' It is such a pity he cannot be a hater ; he can 
absolutely not hate at all.' 

" He is unfortunately ignorant of the vocabulary of 
polemics." 



" His was the soul of things," writes Dr. J. O'B. 
Lowry, " the atmosphere in which he lived. His ear was 



MEMORABILIA 23 

quick to catch their spirit and undertone. His eye 
was alert to discern structure and proportion. The very 
shading of truth found a hospitable mind in him. 

"The surprising quality in his style was its objective 
force. The synthetic feature is not usually associated 
with the finest discrimination. Subtle in his mental 
processes, Doctor Boardman was clear as crystal in 
expressing his thoughts. 

" He had an etymological mastery of language, and a 
sense of sacred moral value in the use of words. His 
thoughts never rattled loosely in coarse, ill-fitting 
words. He sought carefully, with pains, the best word. 
Adjectives are under the ban with many writers. Not so 
with him. He marshaled them with climacteric force." 



The illustrious Dr. Horace Howard Furness exclaims : 
" Let others extol him as a theologian and as a pastor. 
I knew him as the warm-hearted friend, the genial 
companion whose store of learning and refined culture 
illumined every hour in his society, whose convictions 
were adamantine, but their expression as gentle as the 
air. Ah, when shall we look upon his like again ? 
Who that had once seen it can ever forget that win- 
ning smile, those luminous eyes and face irradiated by 
some happy, humorous thought ? " 



Dr. H. H. Peabody thus writes with keen under- 
standing : " Doctor Boardman had the gift of the 
humorous, than which nothing has a more finishing 
effect upon character. He had it, not that it had him. 



24 MEMORABILIA 

It frequently has as we know, its encroachments upon 
reverence, upon earnestness, upon sobriety. Yet I 
never knew of an occasion when the strings of his dig- 
nity — and a dignified man he was — were so loosened 
that the undignified for a moment had sway with him. 
His humorousness had its subsoil of sobriety and was 
a part of the rare common sense with which he was 
endowed. It was only when the humorous mood came 
that you saw how sharp-eyed he was in his perceptions, 
how shrewd and detective of the weak point, and how 
absolutely sane he was in all his judgments. 

"Again this humorousness of our absent friend was 
united with great purity of heart, and unlike many a 
humorist was never betrayed into a coarseness. The 
higher type of humor that he possessed has no need of 
being held in check, but is too well and permanently 
poised to taint itself by a coarseness of spirit or word. 
His humor was one form of his refinement, the field in 
which he innocently played and where he touched 
others with his own genial glow. 

" His humor tended to preserve the simple natural- 
ness of his character and prevented a morbid faith 
setting up its dominion over him. 

"To him religion was his nature's best. He safe- 
guarded himself from appearing even to be more relig- 
ious than he was, while his heart moved out more and 
more after the realism of his Master. In this moral 
realism his humor bore its part. He would have made 
fun of himself under a spurious emotion, and laughed it 
out of his heart. 

" He never seemed anxious to shine. He was not 
combative by nature nor morally disputatious. He was 



MEMORABILIA 25 

serene and unswayed by passion and prejudice, and so 
to those about him always had that sweet graciousness, 
which is only another name for the beautiful. He had a 
quiet insistence, and a clear self -revelation. He was sen- 
sitive over the wounds he might give, but never gave. 
"The spiritual modesty, the absolute unpretentious- 
ness of this St. George of ours, marked him always. He 
was a beautiful man. And permeating all, crowning, fin- 
ishing all, was this sweet humorousness, in which his very 
soul went into play amid the sunshine of life's fair fields." 



The honored bishop of Eastern Pennsylvania, the 
Right Reverend O. W. Whitaker, in speaking of Doctor 
Boardman's tireless efforts to promote Christian unity 
says : " He believed in and longed for spiritual church 
unity, and lamented the divisions among the followers 
of Christ. He had a remarkably clear and distinct spir- 
itual vision and a strong intellect. His sympathies were 
not bound by the church as it exists in the world but 
they took in the whole of humanity and he longed for 
the time when there should be one flock. 

" Doctor Boardman was a firm believer in the * Mis- 
sion of Sects,' teaching that * each sect has a special and 
destined use and blessing in God's kingdom on earth,' 
as he many times eloquently set forth for various de- 
nominations. He yet deplored the spirit of sectarianism, 
which alienates and divides, criticises and condemns, and 
he suffered deep and bitter pain in harsh comments and 
careless words in differing opinions. 

" Love, that uniting force, which 

* makes one thing of all theology! 



26 MEMORABILIA 

gave to his pure vision the ' unification of Christendom.' 
To quote his own words, * Not by compromise of prin- 
ciples, but by comprehension of diversities, by magni- 
fying points of agreement and minimizing points of 
divergence. This idea of comprehension is the modern 
contribution to ecclesiology. The old method was to 
search for similarities ; the new method is to recognize 
diversities. Do not try, then, to secure unity by ham- 
mering diversities into monotonous flatness, but try to 
secure unity by soaring high enough to comprehend 
diversities, even as God's own sky comprehends ocean 
and forest, valley and mountain, man and flower.' 

" In many addresses, notably one before the Evan- 
gelical Alliance at Florence, Italy ; in his ' Eirenicon,' 
widely sent over the country, in his influence in the 
' League of Catholic Unity,' in the inauguration of 
union services on Good Friday, in clerical reunions, in 
the Brotherhood of the Kingdom, he presented this 
ideal, to quote his own words, of 'the one organic 
Church of the living God, the one Church of the elect 
and regenerate and sanctified, the one Church of the 
spiritual corporation of redeemed humanity, the one 
ideal Church of the sum total of Christly characters in 
all lands and times and of all sects.' " 



The Rev. Dr. Henry C. McCook, of that famous 
Scotch Presbyterian family known as the "fighting 
McCooks," says : " Doctor Boardman was a Son of 
Peace. He was a well-known champion of universal 
peace, and the disarmament of nations. He was a pa- 
triot that loved his country well, but loved her best, not 



MEMORABILIA 27 

in war, but in the nobler achievements and paths of peace. 
To him true * patriotism was internationalism,' and war 
was intolerably cruel and abhorrent. Yet I, who took 
part in two wars, and he, who was verily a Friend, dwelt 
together in unity as neighborly pastors for thirty years. 

" To him, the Divine Altruist's philosophy seemed to 
forbid war ; * The idea that moral wrong can be righted 
by physical force/ again and again he cried, * is alike in- 
human and unchristian. It is a reversion to the animal 
stage, or pre- Adamite type. I cannot be so elaborate in 
my exegesis, as to believe that when our King said, 
" Love your enemies and bless them," he really meant, 
" Fight your enemies and kill them." ' He seized upon 
St. Paul's analogon, ' We are members one of another,' 
as the basal biological concept of ideal society. There- 
fore, these integral biological relations of nation with 
nation make 'all nations constitute one common Nation, 
the one august body of Mankind.' 

"Again, to quote his own words : 'That majestic ideal 
organism which we call the Social Body, or Corporate 
Mankind, consists of many diversities, balanced in com- 
mon counterpoise, and working in mutual interaction. 
Each nation has its own distinct individual mission, but 
its relation to its fellow-nations is not one of hostile 
competition but of integrant co-operation.' 

"'Patriotism then is Internationalism' So profound 
and insistent became at last his convictions of the waste 
of war, not merely of material resources but of spiritual 
energies, that in 1890 he took the bold step of an indi- 
vidual appeal to the American people to disarm and to 
lead the van of all nations in ending wars, and leaguing 
all mankind in a covenant of endless amity. 



28 MEMORABILIA 

" ' The Federation of the World! His address on 
* Disarmament of Nations, or Mankind One Body,' 
delivered at Washington, immediately published, ran 
through several editions, and was a notable contribution 
to the thought of the time. 

" As president of the American Arbitration and Peace 
Society ; and as a member of the Pennsylvania Peace 
Society, of the Universal Peace Union ; the Boston Peace 
Society ; the British National Peace Society ; La Societe* 
de la Paix, France ; the International Bureau de la Paix, 
Berne, Switzerland ; the Belgian Peace Society ; the 
International Arbitration and Peace Association, he gave 
addresses on both sides of the ocean, and his epigrams 
went ringing down the aisles of European countries : 

Chivalry consists in Beatitudes? 

Manliness consists in Chris tliness? 

Righteousness consists in Altruism? 

Patriotism consists in Internationalism? 

The Athletics of the Beatitudes require most sturdy 
moral muscle? " 



The world-widely known secretary of the British 
Peace Society, Dr. W. Evans Darby, writes from Lon- 
don : " One of the best of your citizens of Philadelphia, 
who for many years represented the cause of Peace, 
and, in fact, every good cause, and whose strenuous ad- 
vocacy was most effective, Dr. George Dana Boardman, 
is greatly missed in our onward work. He was so thor- 
oughly identified with your city and so identified with 
the cause of peace that one can hardly think of peace 
or Philadelphia apart from him. 



MEMORABILIA 29 

" We all miss him greatly. Doctor Boardman was an 
advocate of International Peace when the cause was not 
popular, as it is to-day ; when, as Lowell says : 

• ' To side with Truth is noble, 

When we share her wretched crust, 
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, 
And it' s prosperous to be just. 

" He ever thought more of the justice of a cause than 
its prosperity. Truth was always imperative to him, 
and its advocacy never admitted of expediency, however 
it may call for a wise judgment. 

" He practically stood alone save for a few chosen 
witnesses who were associated with him, but his advo- 
cacy has penetrated to the ends of the earth. 

" It was an honor to have his personal friendship, 
and to be associated with him in one of the greatest of 
causes, and I cannot satisfy heart or conscience without 
a few simple words of personal tribute and loving recol- 
lection. As I said before, we miss him greatly. I am 
sure that if the inhabitants of that higher sphere to 
which he has withdrawn are cognizant of what transpires 
here below, he is deeply interested in our proceedings. 

" A higher power than his will establish that ' Peace 
Bureau,' which his earnest efforts failed to accomplish 
at the American Capitol, but it will be the World's 
Bureau of International Peace." 



The Hon. Charles B. Lore, Chief Justice of Dela- 
ware, writes : " Doctor Boardman's Christ-like spirit 
and faith broadened beyond all denominational lines and 



30 MEMORABILIA 

grasped Christianity in its essence as the doctrine of 
love and peace. 

" The brotherhood of men as sons of God was the 
keystone of his Christian philosophy. He held on high 
the lofty ideal of brotherhood and sonhood to a loving 
Father and lived it out himself in his gentle, courteous 
altruism. The Prince of Peace uniting all Christen- 
dom, ending all disputes and wars of nations — this was 
the God whom he served. 

" His soul panted for the day to come when the 
sword should be turned into the plowshare, the spear 
into the pruning-hook, and all men should dwell to- 
gether in unity. That more than a tenth of the human 
race should be kept in arms and marshaled in war to 
mutilate and destroy their fellow-men, was repugnant to 
his nature. I well remember his expressions of joy, 
when amid our war the conference at the Hague prom- 
ised to open the door for the settlement of all national 
disputes by international arbitration. In the Parliament 
of Nations he, as a seer, saw the time come when wars 
would cease. All his later years were dominated by 
this grand thought. It stands out as a beacon light on 
all his writings. His big soul lived in the future, far in 
advance of his time. A foregleam of this ideal unity 
of Christ-dominion came in the memorable ' Parliament 
of Religions ' in 1893, when representatives of all nation- 
alities, creeds, faiths, bowed once a day for nearly three 
weeks in the spirit of reverent worship before one Al- 
mighty Father, ■ on the basis of his Son's universal 
prayer.' 

" To Doctor Boardman was given the illustrious honor 
of delivering the closing address before these august 



MEMORABILIA 31 

assemblies, on ' Christ the Unifier of Mankind,' the one 
august Sovereign, < blending all races, ages, capacities, in 
his own transcendent personality as the Son of Man.' 

" He had been often sent as the American rep- 
resentative to Ecumenical Councils, World's Mis- 
sionary Conferences, Universal Peace Alliances, Evan- 
gelical Alliances, but I believe one of the latest of these 
services was when he was present at the Hague Con- 
ference as an unofficial representative of the sylvan 
city of Penn. 

" It was not given him to see in flesh the one nation 
of mankind, his ideal ' Corporate Mankind ' nor his 
* Universal Peace Bureau,' but his influence still moves 
onward in the mighty progress of our race." 



Mr. Harry S. Hopper, the philanthropic banker, whose 
name is generosity, writes : " Of the many pleasant and 
helpful memories of the most lovable man I have ever had 
the privilege of associating with, the one standing out 
most prominently is the intimate knowledge of the Scrip- 
tures possessed by George Dana Boardman and his power 
to impart this knowledge to others. His gentle, lovable 
manner made me feel as though I were giving a little, 
instead of receiving great draughts of the truth. His 
life was an inspiration, and though dead he yet lives." 



Doctor Braislin writes : " Doctor Boardman during 
the busy years often spoke to me of his fixed purpose to 
resign public work when in full and entirely recognized 
vigor of manhood, thus loyally devoting to this one 



32 MEMORABILIA 

beloved church the best energies of a man's lifetime. 
After long and conscientious deliberation he fixed on 
the thirtieth anniversary of his ministry as the dreaded 
time of parting, which caused him more intense pain 
than the world ever knew. His people cried out in 
grief and remonstrance, but his judgment remained 
firm. The Press of Philadelphia cried out : 

" ' The resignation of Dr. George Dana Boardman as 
pastor of the First Baptist Church of this city will be 
a real loss, not only to that church but to the city as a 
whole. Doctor Boardman, by example as also by pre- 
cept, has done a great and useful work in Philadelphia. 
Every Christian, without regard to denominational 
lines, will learn of Doctor Boardman 's retirement with 
a sense of real sorrow.' 

" ' The Philadelphia public will decline to consider the 
resignation of Doctor Boardman as an announcement of 
his retirement from anything but active pastoral work. 
He will remain an energetic force in the upbuilding 
of all that is worthy and noble in the city, to whose 
fair fame as the nursery of eminent men he has con- 
tributed and is contributing so much. His moving 
eloquence, his scholarly tastes, and his productive pen 
will not be laid aside with his ministerial functions. 
He will continue to benefit his fellow-men in accus- 
tomed congenial activities in his denomination, and far 
beyond it. Doctor Boardman will not be an idler in 
the world.' " 



Immediately following his resignation came various 
invitations. A college presidency, professorships, 



MEMORABILIA 33 

courses on ethics. He accepted for one term an 
ethical lectureship at the University of Chicago, after- 
wards for months gave a series of lectures, addresses 
at Chautauqua, Saratoga, Colorado Springs, and many 
summer schools. 

At the request of prominent citizens a course of 
lectures on " Corporate Society " was given in Phila- 
delphia which were chronicled as " having magnetized 
thinkers and lovers of the truth, and made an impression 
upon the city." Judge Ashman in behalf of " the people 
expressed their gratitude for these masterpieces of eru- 
dition and compend of sound moral precepts." From 
the basal concept of " Corporate Mankind," with diverse 
functions but integrant interaction, he ascended to "the 
corporate head of mankind, the Lord Jesus Christ, the 
unifying force of humanity." " Mankind," to quote his 
own words, " passed through three stages of life : 

"First: The I-istic, or barbarous, saying with Cain, 
' Am I my brother's keeper ? ' 

" Second: The Other-istic, or civilized, saying with 
St. Paul, * We are members one of another.' 

" Third: The Whole-istic, or Christian, saying, with 
the Son of Man, 'perfected into one.' " 

"The coining of this term 'I-ism' by Doctor Board- 
man is a happy thought," says Mr. Herman Hegner, of 
the Chicago Commons. " This word is exactly what is 
needed ; the I-istic class are essentially selfish ; give 
the right-of-way to this word which shows their evils." 



In speaking of Doctor Boardman's lectures on soci- 
ology, so widely delivered from East to West, a New 



34 MEMORABILIA 

York sociologist says : " Doctor Boardman was not a 
political economist and did not assume the role of one. 
But because his mind was enlightened by Jesus Christ 
he saw and he foresaw a richer, truer, healthier life of 
the great social body of humanity. His was a religious, 
ethical, prophetical sociology of divine biology. 

" His ethical books, such as 'The Kingdom ' and 'The 
Church,' considered as literature, are characterized by ex- 
ceeding clearness of conception and by exceeding direct- 
ness of statement ; by very practical discussions of modern 
problems in crisp and vigorous English, perhaps icono- 
clastic to some old mannerisms of thinking — broad posi- 
tions, but always as generous toward the convictions of 
others as he is clear in the statement of his own. 

"The catholic and irenic spirit of the author is 
everywhere conspicuous. There is no trace of a polemic 
temper or purpose. We have only thought and rev- 
erent studies of great and sacred subjects. We are 
face to face with a teacher who is in search of truth." 



In 1899 Doctor Boardman founded a "Lectureship 
in Christian Ethics " in the University of Pennsylvania, 
with which he had many years been connected as 
trustee, chaplain, and ethical lecturer. 

By invitation of the Board of Trustees he delivered 
the inaugural lecture on his own foundation on "The 
Golden Rule." In it he outlined the terms of his 
lectureship as will be always printed on the forefront 
of every printed volume of lectures : 

" The purpose : Is to build up Christian character 
after the model of Jesus Christ's. 



MEMORABILIA 35 

" The range: Should be as wide as human society 
itself. 

" The spirit: It must be a lectureship in practical 
ethics from the standpoint of Christ's own personal 
character, example, and teachings. 

" The qualification : The lecturer may often be a 
layman, for Christian ethics is a matter of daily prac- 
tical life rather than a metaphysical theology. He 
may belong to any sect, for Christian ethics or Christ's 
behavior is not a matter of ecclesiastical ordination. 
The only pivotal condition of the lectureship is that 
the lecturer is unconditionally loyal to our King, our 
Lord Jesus Christ, who is himself the world's true, 
everlasting Ethics." 



The eloquent lawyer, John Sparhawk, Jr., Esq., 
writes: "There has passed from our midst one who 
left his footprints on four continents and his memory 
in loving remembrance all over the earth. And yet this 
world-citizen, born as he was under the skies of Asia, 
realized so well that he was now a citizen of no mean 
city, that when others read from the sacred word, 
' Let brotherly love continue,' he read from the Greek, 
< Let Philadelphia continue.' And again, when others 
exhorted to add to faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge 
and to knowledge temperance and to temperance god- 
liness, he would add the final word, ' and to Godliness, 
Philadelphia, the love of the brotherhood.' 

" And this brotherly love pulsed through every fibre of 
his being. Love, unity, peace, — these formed the great 
triumvirate which became to him the supreme dynamic. 



36 MEMORABILIA 

For these he labored incessantly, unintermittently, tire- 
lessly. He knew that it was a far cry to the mil- 
lennium ; that we may not look away to the Pillars of 
Hercules and see the results closing in as fast and far 
as one might wish. He knew that it was only when we 
have rested from our labors that our works do follow 
us. But he was content to wait and work and watch 
and pray and hope. 

" We speak with love of him as our fellow-citizen, and 
yet he loved the burning suns from whence he came, 
and longed at times to go back under them to die. 
You cannot take the Orient out of the blood. Rudyard 
Kipling says, ' You can hear the East a-calling on the 
road to Mandalay,' and her voice never dies out of the 
ears which have once heard her and known of her 
spell. He said to me once, ' I want to die in the East.' 

" He came of a great and a godly race, whose name 
and influence are known wherever the four winds of 
heaven and Euroclydon blow. His sainted father, 
George Dana Boardman, whose name he bore, was one 
of the first missionaries to India. He himself was 
born in Burma, where rests his father's dust. His 
mother's grave is where the waves wash the rocks of 
St. Helena. 

" He labored for the world's work and spent his 
strength in her service. Let the multitudes whom he 
has helped by his generosities and his words bear wit- 
ness. His parish was the globe. He did not crave, 
like the great philosopher, eighteen inches of West- 
minster Abbey. The trumpets of fame, as one has said 
of another, were to him as « the hootings of gnats.' 
The gold of the Nibelungen was as the penny of 



MEMORABILIA 37 

Caesar in the fish's mouth. He never wearied in well- 
doing. Like his Master, he went about doing good. In 
the Koran, it is said, ' When a man dies his fellows ask, 
What has he left behind him ? The angels ask, What 
has he sent before him?' And he sent much before. 
His rectitude of purpose never failed. His steps never 
faltered on the King's highway. He kept the sky-line 
in view. He knew that the age of the exotic and the 
orchid had passed. He knew that he was not to be 
carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, but that 
travel-stained and battle-swept he was to reach the door 
of his Father's house. 

" Sorrow and suffering hedged both the beginning 
and the end of his days. He never referred to his 
youth willingly ; he did not wish it spoken of ; indeed, 
so great was his reluctance, and so guarded his manly 
reserve that very few friends ever knew of its terrors at 
all, or how heroic was his quiet self-control, how brave 
the struggle for years continued over nerves that 
quivered at sharp sounds. They read in the * Encyclo- 
paedia of Missions ' of a mother clasping a frail infant, 
fleeing at midnight, amid yells and shots of fierce na- 
tives and firing of jinjals, and knew that he never 
could endure a sudden noise or shock, and always 
absented himself from the cities on the fourth of July. 

" But surely now one may speak, and * not offend ' 
the intense manliness of personality, of an experience 
that hued his whole life ; a strange preparation to 
equip a man for the world's work. 

"At the age of six he was sent alone on a nine 
months' voyage from India. Alone, but for the com- 
panionship of a wild crew of a sailing vessel who made 



3% MEMORABILIA 

his little life a plaything for torture; the tender and 
shrinking child was assailed with coarse jests upon 
saying his prayers, taunts upon his weakness, abuse 
of his habits of refinement, throwing overboard the 
tokens of love ; he was tied up aloft to witness the 
dying agonies of his poor goat, its throat cut from ear 
to ear, his playmate in the mission compound at 
Moulmein ; he was shocked with frights, dragged 
through the sea in the wake of the vessel by a rope ; 
extended on the deck and knives drawn across his help- 
less little body; he was thrown into convulsions by 
being forced to fire a cannon that he was told would 
cause his instant death. Mind you, this was at six 
years of age, and alone on a wide, wide sea ; his only 
escape was to climb into the boat at the stern of the 
ship and weep his lonely tears, look over the gray 
waves, and pray to the God his mother had taught 
loved him. When the sailing vessel, on which the 
crew had mutinied, and the craft been given up for lost, 
finally reached Boston, he was thrown like a package of 
merchandise from the deck to the land, striking the 
ground with violence and filling his little mouth with 
earth. But he kissed the earth of his mother's land, and 
prayed that his mother's God would make some one kind 
to him. Nor did his child-sufferings end here. From the 
equator to the North ; from one vicissitude to another ; 
from one kind of treatment to another ; now carried 
from bed to an ice douche in the morning ; now shut up 
in a steam box. Precocious, polite, reserved, he was mis- 
understood, because he did not talk like other children ; 
all the while he was holding the resolve that his dear 
mother should never know what he endured. Those 



MEMORABILIA 39 

cruel men might come, as they had said, in the dark 
midnight when he lay shivering, to cut out his tongue, 
to cut out his heart — he could suffer but she should not 
know. And never till she was safe in heaven did he 
tell one word. Meantime, as he grew his chief refuge 
was in study ; his precocious ability was nearly fitted 
for college, and he read Greek with the advanced theo- 
logical classes before he was ten years old. The 
inevitable followed ; nerves revolted from so much 
pressure ; three years of illness ensued, illness incom- 
prehensible, misunderstood, mysterious, intense ; three 
years of loss. He had to begin life anew and fit for 
college afresh. 

" It is marvelous that from a youth of such suffering 
and pain that there should have emerged a disposition 
and a nature so sweet, so sunny, so sane, so genial, so 
loving. Out of bitterness and sorrow his ' ways were 
ways of pleasantness and all his paths were peace.' 

" He was asked once if his life-work were summed 
up in one word what would he rather have it be, and 
his answer was Eirene — peace. He longed for the 
furled battle-flag and the spiked gun. The window- 
embrasures of his life looked out from the chamber of 
peace, and on his far horizon line he saw with keener 
vision than the world hath, the peaks and pinnacles of 
the delectable mountains, and afar beyond them the 
sunlighted spires of the Celestial City. 

" Peace was with him not an iridescent dream, but a 
breathing, pulsing reality. A few weeks before his 
death he asked me to go over and to revise with him a 
long communication to President Roosevelt urging 
that, as there was a secretary of war, could there not 



4© MEMORABILIA 

be a secretary of peace — in other words, a cabinet po- 
sition created for this great office and purpose ? He 
longed for the day when the nations should, 

' ' freighted with love' s golden fleece, 
Bring back the argonauts of peace. 

" Men smiled at the enthusiasm of his quest. And 
because he saw these 

* ' argosies of magic sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales, 

not many really understood. Men saw him coming 
down the Dothan path and said, ' Behold, the dreamer 
cometh.' But they did not know that the dreamer 
was a seer, and that down the dim perspectives of time 
he knew that the stars of heaven and the sheaves of 
earth would some day make obeisance to the eternal 
principles he taught and practised. 

" But his usefulness and his activities were not con- 
fined to one field. His books will live after him. His 
'Creative Week,' his 'Ethics of the Body,' his 'Chris- 
tian Unity,' 'The Kingdom,' 'The ChurcrT,' each has 
its place in the wide fields of influence. 

" I will not speak of his long and useful pastorate, 
for others have referred to it at length. 

" The last occasion on which I heard him speak in 
public was at the time the chair of Christian Ethics, 
which he had endowed, was established at the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania. This gift will perpetuate his 
memory to a phase of student life which he longed to 
reach and help. 

" He reminded one of Valiant-for-Truth, that captain 



MEMORABILIA 41 

of the Lord's host in Bunyan's dream, who vanquished 
Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatick. And when 
his feet came down to the wash of the waves of the river 
he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded on the other 
side. But before he departed he left his last will and 
testament. ' My sword I give to him who shall succeed 
me. My courage and skill to him who can get it. My 
marks and scars I carry with me as a witness that I 
have fought a good fight and kept the faith.' And so 
he knew no fear, and pain was to him but a challenge. 
Beside the silent sea he waited the muffled oar in pa- 
tience and his patience was a benediction. Nothing 
could swerve him from his cheerfulness. As the months 
went by his sufferings increased, but he worked on. 
Death stood at salute beside him day after day, but un- 
afraid he heeded him not. The shadow struggled 
backward and forward. With marvelous fortitude he 
filled his patient days of imprisonment with work for 
others, ennobling every hour with wit and cheerful 
bravery, dictating when too weak to move about, a 
book on 'The Ethics of the Body,' for the boys of 
' the Boardman Boys' Guild,' a work of redemption for 
street boys carried on by noble workers, irrespective of 
denominations, affectionately dedicating it ' to all who 
long to make their body-life tributary to their spirit- 
life.' When too feeble to read or dictate he had little 
classes in chemistry in his bedroom ; his weak, sil- 
very voice blithely telling the ' fairy tales of science ' 
which he loved, as messages from a dear Father. 
But suddenly came to this knight of God a voice out 
of the darkness. And so he passed into the peace which 
passeth understanding." 



42 MEMORABILIA 

" Doctor Boardman," says a well-known writer and 
editor, " was no closet student. He traveled much 
and widely; Rome and Athens were as familiar to 
him as Philadelphia. This freshened his literary work 
and his ethical lectures, for it was in these lectures in the 
years that followed his leaving the pastorate that possibly 
his best powers were used. The course he founded at 
the University of Pennsylvania, and his other lectures 
were full of thoughtful eloquence, religious wisdom, and 
spiritual insight, the product of a mind conservative 
and catholic, truly devoted to the search of truth. He 
discerned the good things in men classed worldly, and 
in his speech there was never bitterness. He taught 
all men to wear the white flower of a blameless life by 
wearing it ever himself. 

" To the end he toiled with his pen in the literary 
service of religion with unstinted heroism. I had oc- 
casion to observe him when he came back to Phila- 
delphia from the climates to which he went to prop his 
waning strength ; from the winter he spent in the dry air 
of the Libyan desert, at the Mena house by the ancient 
Pyramids, regaining strength in the kind attentions of 
his English, Greek, and American friends, especially the 
genial Dean Butcher of Cairo, who called him 'the most 
lovable man he had ever known' ; and again from the less 
favorable climates of Florida and the Bahamas in which 
his weakness increased. But however weak, even then, 
far into the night he was working in his library. 

" Philadelphia is a better city for his having lived in 
it, for the lives fashioned by his words and his counsels. 

"He scarce had need to doff his pride or slough the dross of earth, 
E'en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth, 



MEMORABILIA 43 

In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean mirth. 

Who had done his work and held his peace and had no fear to die.' ' 

<** 

President Alvah Hovey, of Newton Theological Insti- 
tution, Mass., wrote : " Doctor Boardman was one of the 
choice spirits of Christendom, a man to be loved and 
admired, and I have for a great many years counted it 
one of my greatest privileges to be numbered with his 
friends. Hundreds will testify their love of him, but 
no one more sincerely than myself. Oh, that I could 
deserve a tithe of the love and admiration which were 
rightfully his ! He was more than half in heaven before 
he left this world. He was in earth, but not on it. 
His thoughts, his aims, his words belonged to the 
higher life that continues forever. 

" Approaching the realm of peace, he felt more 
keenly than ever the unity toward which all things 
tend ; the interrelations of celestial and terrestrial 
laws grew clearer ; deeper meanings grew in all lan- 
guage ; ' God is light ' glittered in new resplendence 
before as yet the wonder of radium had been certified 
to the world. 

" Mighty sweeps of thought came which he ' could not 
utter.' In the long, wakeful midnights, when nerves 
quivered with pain, his listening spirit heard that 

« ' sentinel 
That moves about from place to place, 
And whispers to the vast of space 
Among the worlds that ' all is well. ' ' ' 



44 



MEMORABILIA 



Seraph, we called thee. With thy lofty thought 

In far-sighted vision thou didst descry 

The time of ' ' peace, good-will to men ' ' draw nigh. 

For this thy life its holy service wrought ; 

Like him who first the heavenly message brought, 

The Master s spirit thine. In purpose high 

A builder thou for immortality. 

Living still, in all thy faithful lessons taught, 

Thou mighty one, triumphant, glorious now, 

Thou read' st the stars in new, discerning light, 

Stars often watched from out the earthly night, 

And One among them shineth near and fair, 

The Bethlehem star, with peace upon his brow, 

And in His face the glow of greeting rare. 

A. G. Braislin. 

Tamarlyn, N. J. 



DEC 23 1905 



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